Tell me again how Arab Israelis have equal rights and aren’t second class citizens…

I would like to see the best arguments against the idea that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. If you have an article that you found interesting or convincing, please share it. Not people. Arguments. Video or textual, preferably text.

From Sydney courtrooms to US Congress, the Israel lobby is losing ground, and the Pro-Palestine movement is winning. Andrew Brown reports.

The pro-Palestine movement, in Australia and around the world, is winning more than its opponents want anyone to know.

Antoinette Lattouf beat the ABC in the Federal Court. The racial vilification case against Mary Kostakidis ended without a finding against her. Randa Abdel Fattah’s exclusion from Adelaide Writers’ Week brought the festival down and put an alternative in its place. Police dropped every charge they laid against me at Bondi. The NSW permit regime that threatened everyone’s right to assemble was taaken away by a court.

None of this happened in isolation. The same pattern is unfolding in Madrid, Dublin, London and Washington. Spain has imposed an arms embargo. Ireland has banned settlement goods. Forty United States senators voted to block military sales to Israel. Voters in Michigan and New York elected Israel critics.

The lobby’s best weapon has always been the belief that resistance is pointless.

That belief is collapsing both here and abroad.

The most useful thing this movement could do for its opponents is lose hope. Stop marching. Accept that speaking out brings only trouble. The record says otherwise.

Standing firm

Start with Adelaide. Premier Peter Malinauskas backed the removal of Abdel Fattah from Writers’ Week. Around 180 writers withdrew, and director Louise Adler resigned. A new board apologised and invited Abdel Fattah back for 2027. In March she and Adler shared a stage at Constellations, built from the wreckage.

Exclusion became expensive for the people who imposed it.

Litigation, or lawfare as it is better known, is designed to wear people down, drain their money and make them give up before any judgment arrives. Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto sued Kostakidis. The case ended by consent. No costs order. No finding of wrongdoing. Kostakidis kept talking.

My shirt said, “Fuck Israel, fuck Zionism”. Police arrested me at Bondi in November 2024, called the shirt offensive and laid three charges. I told them I would take it to a higher court and defend the shirt as political communication protected by the Constitution. Their case collapsed. Police withdrew all three charges.

Bullies retreat when someone stands up to them. My view of Israel’s conduct did not change. On social media, thousands asked where they could buy the shirt.

Lattouf’s win went further. Justice Darryl Rangiah found the ABC sacked her unlawfully for reasons that included her opposition to Israel’s campaign in Gaza. His judgment described an organised campaign by advocates for Israel to have her removed.

The broadcaster that caved paid for caving.

Israel lobby power on the wane

The courts have held a line the lobby wants erased. Justices Desmond Fagan and Angus Stewart each rejected the claim that hostility towards Israel amounts to hatred of Jews. Palestine Action Group and Blak Caucus activists overturned NSW’s public assembly restriction scheme. The ABC and SBS refused the IHRA definition that Jillian Segal pushed on them.

The lobby’s power is shrinking here too. Groups that once dictated terms are now called out in public as agents of a foreign state. The accusation of antisemitism, once career-ending, has been thrown so often that it no longer lands. Most Australians now see through the conflation.

Accountability is reaching beyond the courtroom. Eleven Australians sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla and were seized in international waters on 18 May. Juliet Lamont came home alleging she was beaten, cable tied and raped by an Israeli soldier. After she and three other women met Penny Wong in Canberra, the Australian Federal Police opened inquiries. Lamont called it a win.

In seven decades of dealing with Israel, no Australian government has let its police examine the conduct of Israeli soldiers towards Australians. Israel’s ambassador Hillel Newman called it a mistake. It stung.

From Rome to New York – the tide is turning

Australia is not alone. Prosecutors in Rome are investigating possible kidnapping, torture and sexual assault of Italian participants. France’s anti terrorism prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into torture and war crimes against French ones.

What is happening here is happening everywhere the lobby operates. Intimidation is meeting defiance, and defiance is producing results.

Spain’s arms embargo and settlement import restrictions are law. So is Ireland’s ban on settlement goods. Britain, France and Canada are among twelve governments committing to, supporting or considering trade restrictions. Enforcement varies. The direction does not.

Objection is turning into cost. Outside the West, the argument is already over. South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice, and the Global South, almost without exception, stands behind it with a vehemence Western capitals are only beginning to register.

In the United States, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block a bulldozer sale to Israel, and 36 voted against a bomb sale. Both measures failed. A majority of Senate Democrats now vote against arming Israel. Abdul El Sayed won his Michigan primary, and Zohran Mamdani is mayor of New York. Both ran as critics of Israel.

Public opinion

Public opinion is pushing them. Pew Research found 79% of Australians view Israel unfavourably. Gallup found Americans aged 18 to 34 side with Palestinians over Israelis by 53% to 23%.

Israel has lost many American Jews too. A 2025 Washington Post poll found 61% believed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and about 40% believed it had committed genocide. Israel has reportedly allocated $US730m to public diplomacy this year.

Money buys attention. It does not buy belief.

The job is not done. There is still a mountain to climb. The greatest crime of this century is still being committed in Gaza, and Western governments, Australia among them, remain complicit through the arms they supply and the diplomatic cover they provide. No courtroom win in Sydney feeds a child in Khan Younis.

But take encouragement from what the movement has achieved. Israel’s power is being diminished, slowly and measurably, by the people who kept marching when they were told it was pointless.

Think of it as pulling down a dam. You pull out one stone, then another. For a long time the wall looks unchanged. Then enough stones are gone, and the wall gives way. Every charge withdrawn and every embargo signed is a stone out of that wall.

The people who kept marching should be proud of what they have done. Then they should go back and pull out another stone.

It’s everywhere but i pulled this paragraph about Palestine:

‘ Dangu of Confiant said that the malicious ads had been shown to users in "hundreds of networks in sensitive categories," including the Pentagon, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the International Criminal Court. He also said that some regions, like the Palestinian territories, were particularly saturated by the Israeli firm's ads.

"You go to almost any site in Palestine — any site — you find a Discover-Tech ad. It gives them a very complete visibility on the digital activities of an entire country," he said. ‘

The US and US firms keep contracting with Israeli companies to work with sensitive data and infrastructure despite the fact that it’s not necessary at all and we’ve known for decades that it compromises our national security. And industrial espionage by Israel has bern ongoing since the 1940s

I had to use Google Gemini to translate.

About 20 settlers from Bat Ayin and the surrounding outposts raided a quiet, pastoral suburb of Beit Umar. Armed with clubs and petrol bombs, they came to attack and burn, setting cars on fire. This was the first pogrom in the Safa neighborhood.

A quiet and rural residential suburb, a tiny and well-kept courtyard overflowing with potted plants. If the settlers had succeeded in their exploits, this house and the two adjacent to it on either side—handsome stone homes—would have gone up in flames, perhaps with their occupants inside. Fortunately, despite the settlers' attempts, they only managed to set fire to the car parked between the houses, and the smell of smoke still rises from the charred skeleton left behind.

This was the first pogrom in Safa, a suburb of the town of Beit Umar, located between Hebron and Bethlehem. The main entrance to Beit Umar from Route 60 has been closed since October 7, like most of the main entrances to Palestinian West Bank localities. Why, exactly? Just because. The road from Hebron to the town takes about 45 minutes, roundabout through Halhul, all because of the locked iron gate. Even an alternative dirt road between Halhul and Beit Umar, which the local councils of both communities asked to pave with asphalt to ease the bumpy journey, remains broken. There is no approval for asphalt.

Reem Adi is waiting for us in the courtyard of her home. She is 45 years old and a mother of four, married to a semi-unemployed carpenter, Razi Adi, 46. She says she never had problems with settlers until Sunday, September 20. It was a routine day; Reem cleaned the house and cooked, and her eldest son, Muhammad, 17, returned earlier than usual from his job at the chicken coop in town. He has not studied since 10th grade and helps support the family. His mother offered him lunch, but he said he would wait for his father and left the house. The time was 3:30 PM.

In the blink of an eye, she heard shouting from the road, soon recognizing her son's voice. The son shouted for help toward their neighbor in the adjacent house, Majd Adi, 32. Immediately afterward, the son came running into the courtyard: "Mom, Mom, the settlers want to burn the house," he said in terror. The mother says she opened the door, and her son quickly pushed her back inside. She managed to see a group of settlers with fuel containers in their hands trying to force their way into the house.

According to her, there were about 20 masked settlers, armed with clubs, shouting, with tzitzit (fringes) poking out of their clothes, and petrol bombs in their hands. They came to burn. One of them grabbed her son by the arm, and Reem tried to free him. She describes how one settler grabbed her hair, while another hit her hand. Another settler opened the cap of a fuel bottle, threatening to pour it on her or her son, terrifying Reem. She says he also reached behind his back, and she imagined he was doing so to draw a weapon, a knife, or a pistol.

The settlers screamed at them, "Arab dogs". Reem's daughter, Rawan, 22, who was in the house with her, burst into screams of terror. Her cousin, Hala, 20, climbed onto the roof of the neighboring house and began throwing objects at the settlers gathered in the yard, causing them to flee and regroup.

The residents shut themselves inside their homes. One resident says that at this stage, the settlers split into several cells. One cell tried to invade the stone house of the neighbor on the right, Muhammad Adi. A stylish marble staircase leads to the entrance, and there, on the doorstep, one of the settlers poured the flammable liquid he carried after realizing the door was locked. At that time, the mother of the family and two of her children were home—a 14-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy named Sajed, a heart patient who underwent open-heart surgery at Wolfson Hospital when he was two. The girls of the house managed to drive the rioters away with screams. Short, fragmented videos filmed by the residents, some with shaking hands, mostly capture the terrified screams of women and children locked in their homes as a line of frightening, uninvited guests raids them.

Meanwhile, news of the settler invasion spread through the neighborhood's WhatsApp groups, and many young men began rushing to help the residents of the three attacked houses. After the settlers failed to break into the house on the right, they moved to the one on the left. Here too, the doors were locked, so they settled for torching a Mazda 323 parked next to the house, which was completely consumed by fire. On their way out of the street, they tried to set four more cars on fire.

B'Tselem field researchers, Manal Ja'bari and Nasser Nawajah, who prepared a report on the attack, said that three cars were partially damaged after their owners managed to extinguish the flames and save them.

However, another vehicle was completely burned—a Kia jeep belonging to a neighbor whose daughter is disabled. This mini-pogrom lasted between 20 and 30 minutes before the gang departed. They came on foot and returned on foot toward Bat Ayin and its outposts, north of Safa.

On the day of the pogrom, the police and army arrived at the scene, but only one resident filed a complaint about his car being burned. The Israel Police stated to Haaretz this week: "On that very day, an investigation into the case was opened and remains ongoing with the aim of uncovering the identity of the suspects and investigating their actions accordingly."

A spectacular valley of terraces separates Safa from Bat Ayin. On the mountaintop opposite, a new outpost about three months old stands out with a giant Israeli flag; the houses of Bat Ayin are scattered across the mountainside, to the point that one can no longer tell what is an outpost and what is the original settlement.

This violent settlement, from which the Bat Ayin underground and quite a few other riots emerged, was mentioned this week as a bit of comic relief. The "Kipa" news website reported that the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, Yaron Rosenthal, claimed that residents and activists from outside the settlement are taking over public lands within the boundaries of the settlement itself. The regional council has already taken several steps against these Jewish land thieves, including disconnecting their electricity. Is there anything more ironic?

It is safe to assume that Council Head Rosenthal was never shocked by the violent takeover of surrounding Palestinian lands by the residents of Bat Ayin and its outposts. Take the olive groves in the valley belonging to the residents of Safa, for instance, which they can no longer approach. According to residents' estimates, between 700 and 1,000 olive trees are planted on the slope and in the valley, and they are barred from reaching them due to the terror of the settlers, whose exact goal this is. In the coming days, this will be put to the test as residents attempt to head out for the olive harvest.

The researcher Nawajah holds maps distributed by the army ahead of this year's harvest across the West Bank.

Some olive groves are marked in red, meaning coordination with the army is required to harvest the trees. Quite a few groves are marked in black, and these groves will be completely forbidden to harvest this year.

Since the violent incident on September 20, settler incursions into Safa have intensified. According to the residents, not a day goes by without them riding through the streets, mainly on motorcycles or ATVs, making slaughter gestures with their hands to the residents. A few days after the attack, another violent incident occurred here. On the 27th of last month, two settlers riding a motorcycle tried to invade Safa, claiming that children had thrown stones at them.

Majd's father, Ismail, 60, went out to meet them wearing a motorcycle helmet, just like his two attackers who arrived on a motorcycle in helmets. A video shows one of the settlers drawing his weapon and firing toward Ismail's feet, likely to scare him. The two bullets did not hit him; they struck the ground and injured no one. The IDF arrived that day and fired tear gas—at the residents, of course.

A Mitsubishi jeep approaches the street where Reem lives. Its windshield is smashed, the handiwork of one of the intruders during the first attack. In Reem's backyard, through which the settlers retreated, there is a corrugated metal wall spray-painted with the words: "Nekama. Pigua" (Revenge. Terrorist Attack). The graffiti is in red and, of course, in Hebrew. No one has erased it so far.

This piece is very instructive. Genocide prominent Konstantin Kisin argued passionately that Israel can mass murder as many Palestinian civilians, including children, as they like. He felt that October 7 justified everything and that Palestinians are to blame if Israel decides to commit genocide.

Israelis obviously felt the same way, hence the genocide.

Dave Smith pushed back against that and pointed out, very politely, all the dozens of ways that Kisin is wrong, from really stupid analogies to genocidal rhetoric. Kisin was forced to jump around from one hypothetical to another to try and justify murdering 20,000 children.

At the end of the day neither changed their mind. Smith thought genocide and the mass murder if children’s wrong and Kisin thought it was correct if it was Israel doing it.

When Smith was talking about how it’s morally wrong to starve women and children in Gaza, Kisin’s face very clearly said “no, starving Palestinian women and children is always fine!” You can’t expect morality from most Zionists. They just don’t understand the concept.

I do not understand the position of zionists.

What is the supposed outcome that zionists want?

A) Two states: This requires the settlements to be removed or to be ceded to Palestine and IDF to leave Palestine.

B) One state: This requires rights to be granted to Palestinians.

C) Some small areas of Palestinian land, that is Area A, surrounded on all sides by Israel.

D) Ethnic cleansing or killing of all Palestinians.

Because, no zionists I see are pushing for any progress towards any of these except for C and D, which are both truly awful. No one wants to punish Israel for working against A and B.

And, can we please lockdown what people think are the borders of Israel?

About half of Gaza's pre-war Christian population is left. In the West Bank, Palestinian Christians are contending with unremitting settler violence. But Bishop William Shomali, the Vatican's Vicar of Jerusalem, still has hope

At dawn on Saturday, October 3, 2026, Maisa Abu Dawoud and her daughter Mary, members of Gaza's Greek Orthodox community, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza City. Their deaths deepen the losses of a community whose numbers have fallen by about half since the war began. During the war, 58 Christians died, either as a result of military attacks or from illness.

"There are now 550 Christians left in Gaza," says Bishop William Shomali, vicar general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem since 2021. Speaking from his office near Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, he describes a community struggling to rebuild, even as many of its members seek a way out.

Gaza's Christians are "in need of so much. They are tired. And they want to leave," he tells Haaretz.

Shomali, the most senior Palestinian Catholic prelate, was born in 1950 in the West Bank city of Beit Sahour. He studied in Beit Jala, Jordan and Rome, and was consecrated as an auxiliary bishop of Jerusalem and Palestine in Bethlehem in May 2010. As vicar general, he is second-in-command to Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in a Patriarchate encompassing Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus.

His work brings him into close contact with congregants and their communities, while navigating between the warring sides requires both pastoral care and a healthy dose of ecclesiastical diplomacy.

Before the war, most of Gaza's Christians lived near the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches in Gaza City, and their children attended Christian schools. Displaced from their homes, they sought refuge from the shelling in the church compounds. Those places of shelter also became sites of death.

On October 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building within the compound of Gaza City's Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, killing 18 civilians. At the Catholic Holy Family Church compound, two women were killed by IDF fire in December 2023, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Israeli tank fire struck the compound in July 2025, killing three people.

The community's plight drew sustained attention from the Vatican. A week after October 7, Pizzaballa expressed his "total willingness" to be exchanged for Israeli children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. From the start of the war until two days before his death in April 2025, Pope Francis made daily phone calls to Father Gabriel Romanelli, the Argentinian priest of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

During the war, around 40 to 50 Christian families left Gaza for Australia, while 22 students went to Madaba, Jordan, to study at the university established there by the Patriarchate. Others continue to seek a way to leave, according to Shomali.

"Many of them call me every week," Shomali says. "They say: Father, we want to go abroad, wherever we can, to Jordan, Egypt, Europe, Australia, Canada. But it is not easy to leave now. There are many, many political challenges."

Yet he also sees tentative signs of renewal. According to Shomali, following the cease-fire in October 2025, many Christians returned to homes that had been damaged but not completely destroyed. The church compound remains a gathering place where congregants can charge their phones, get drinking water and pray.

The Latin Patriarchate School in Gaza reopened in September, welcoming about 1,000 students, he notes. "Some are Christians, but the majority are Muslims: The Muslim families believe in the education we offer, which is quite different from the radical education provided by Hamas. There were 10,000 applicants, but we don't have space for them."

In the West Bank, a different set of pressures is also driving Christians to consider leaving. The severe economic repercussions of the Gaza war, surging settler violence and growing intimidation by settlers and the IDF are accelerating emigration.

"Settler attacks on, and IDF incursions into, Christian towns like Taybeh, Birzeit, Aboud, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour create unrest and fear," Shomali says.

"Many Christian families, especially in Bethlehem, are thinking of leaving, and procedurally it's easy for them to leave." Many Palestinian Christians have relatives abroad and already hold foreign passports, including from the United States, Canada or El Salvador; many others have applied for immigrant visas.

"Every family that leaves unfortunately makes the Christian community remaining in Bethlehem more vulnerable and fragile," he says.

These departures intensify a demographic decline that began long before Israel's founding. In the mid-19th century, historic Palestine's 21,000 Christians constituted about 10 percent of its population, Shomali says. Lower birthrates and sustained emigration, starting from the late Ottoman period, have since reduced their share. Poverty, harsh rule and fear of conscription into the sultan's army drove many to South America, including Chile, now home to an estimated 400,000 people of Palestinian descent, among them Shomali's relatives.

Within the Holy Land, Christians have increasingly moved from their villages to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem to sustain communal life. Today, Shomali estimates that more than 1.5 million Palestinian Christians live in the diaspora, while Christians number 185,000 in Israel and 50,000 in the Palestinian territories, about one to two percent of their respective populations.

The figures are bleak, but Shomali rejects predictions that the community will disappear.

"Some pessimists say that in 30 or 40 years, there will be no Christians left in the Holy Land. I think this is far too pessimistic. Christian communities will remain, especially around the holy places. But numbers also matter, and today our numbers are very low."

A recent encounter with settlers in his hometown of Beit Sahour in the West Bank brought those pressures closer to home.

We were both in Beit Sahour in August when settlers fired toward Palestinians and Israeli activists taking part in a solidarity action. Why were you there?

"I have an emotional attachment to Beit Sahour. I was born there, and my family lives there. When I was told there would be a tree-planting event on land belonging to Christian families, I couldn't say no. It was a way to show my solidarity. When I heard that Israeli visitors were joining us, I felt my decision was affirmed.

"Within minutes of our arrival, the settlers knew we were there. A drone was already filming us. Settlers came running, and soldiers followed immediately afterward, with their weapons at the ready, ordering everyone to stop. I'm convinced that the presence of Israelis alongside us provided a certain degree of protection. Without them, I believe we would have faced much harsher treatment.

I had never witnessed live fire before. This aggressiveness is new to me. I will never forget the courage of the Israeli solidarity activists with us, or the contrast with the settlers' violence. I see this as a source of hope: We shouldn't consider all Israelis to be settlers or extreme right-wingers. On the contrary, salvation may come from Israelis themselves.

"This is part of the great mistake Hamas committed on October 7, 2023. They attacked southern Israel, knowing that many of the people they attacked were peace activists. No one in Beit Sahour supports what Hamas has done, not only because of the terrible repercussions of this war, but because the action itself is undoable."

"Many Israelis, before October 7, supported the rights of Palestinians to autonomy, to sovereignty, to two states. But because of what happened, many Israelis took a step back," he says, while recognizing the "many groups" of Israelis who still act in solidarity with Palestinians.

In late March 2026, during the war with Iran, Israeli police severely restricted access to Jerusalem's major holy sites. Their decision to bar the Catholic patriarch from conducting a minimal Palm Sunday Mass at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre with a few Franciscan friars drew international condemnation, including from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, prompting Netanyahu to order a U-turn.

What are relations with the Israeli government like now?

"There were serious tensions during Holy Week," Shomali notes. "We informed the police beforehand, but Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, accompanied by the Custos of the Holy Land [the Franciscan friar who is the official guardian of the Christian Holy Places], was nevertheless prevented from reaching the church.

"The next day, seeking to avoid a diplomatic crisis, the government intervened and instructed the police to allow the cardinal and a delegation of 15 people to enter the Holy Sepulchre and participate in the Holy Week services.

"The situation could have been handled with greater sensitivity. There are, after all, different ways of enforcing a law: One can apply it in the strictest possible way, or with a certain degree of flexibility, civility and common sense. In this case, the police chose to enforce it very strictly.

"Once a year, we pay a visit to the president of Israel, and our relationship with him is generally cordial and correct. There are established channels of communication with his office, and they function reasonably well. However, we have not met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he formed his present government in 2022."

Do you think the Israeli government is more careful not to upset or harm Palestinian Christians than Muslims?

"There is no single attitude among Israelis. Some, including certain government officials, take a longer view.

They understand that Israel has an interest in maintaining good relations with the Christian world and respecting the small Christian communities that continue to live in the Holy Land. Unfortunately, not everyone shares this awareness.

"The case of the Christian villages of Iqrit and Bir'am in northern Israel illustrates the difficulties that Christians have faced. Their inhabitants were displaced in 1948, and despite favorable Israeli court rulings regarding their return, they have never been allowed to re-establish their villages."

How important is the Christian community in the Holy Land to American Catholics?

"There are 80 million Catholics in the United States, including senior administration officials such as Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. There is great solidarity between U.S. Catholics and the Christian communities of the Holy Land. They know that we are a peaceful people and a vulnerable minority, and that continued political unrest threatens our presence in the Holy Land.

"This solidarity is also expressed through material support. Much of the assistance we provide to our people, helping families pay their rent and school tuition or meet basic needs such as buying food, comes from Catholics throughout the world, with particularly generous support from the United States. This is a powerful and concrete sign of solidarity.

"There is also an important diplomatic dimension. When needed, the Holy See engages with U.S. political leaders, appealing for restraint, an end to excessive violence and greater efforts toward peace. These efforts to end the conflict may not yet have yielded visible results. But we hope that, in time, the solidarity expressed by the Vatican and the Catholic world will make a more concrete contribution to peace.

"One important area is advocacy for a political solution according to UN resolutions. In Europe, there is a move towards a two-state solution. In the U.S., the shift is smaller but it is happening. The shocking images from Gaza have had an impact, and settler violence is harming Israel's image in the world, even among supporters of Israel. If U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has the courage to talk about 'Israeli terrorists,' even though he was attacked for saying it, others will follow and have the courage to say more."

Shomali notes that, after the wave of sympathy for Israel after October 7, international public opinion has shifted due to the scale of Palestinian suffering. "Suffering is not the monopoly of one people, one religion, or one community. We must acknowledge the suffering of everyone – Christians, Muslims and Jews. At the same time, the magnitude of the suffering endured by the people of Gaza has been without parallel," he says. "It is in Israel's own interest to change this situation and demonstrate a genuine commitment to a just solution, rather than remaining indefinitely in this gray zone of neither war nor peace."

Can there be reconciliation?

"I would like to give the obvious example of Europe. After two terrible world wars, during which tens of millions of civilians and soldiers were killed, and the map of Europe was changed, three political leaders – [French Foreign Minister] Robert Schuman, [Italian Prime Minister] Alcide De Gasperi and [West German Chancellor] Konrad Adenauer, all Catholics and men of faith, I say this with pride – had the courage to choose reconciliation rather than revenge.

"If Europe could reconcile after so much bloodshed, then reconciliation is also possible in the Middle East. We need leaders with the same courage and vision to build a new Middle East out of the suffering of today, just as those leaders built a new Europe out of the ruins of war.

"Another striking example is the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel's Knesset in November 1977. I was 27 years old. When I was told that Sadat was coming to Jerusalem to propose peace, I could hardly believe my ears. I cried throughout his speech, especially when he said: 'When the bells of peace ring, there will be no hands to beat the drums of war.' There he was, being applauded by the members of the Knesset and receiving a standing ovation. This happened here, in the Middle East.

"There are other examples. I remember King Hussein of Jordan coming, with great humility, to offer his condolences and ask forgiveness after a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls at Naharayim in March 1997. And I remember Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had made the courageous decision to seek a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before he was assassinated.

"That is why I still have hope. History can surprise us. What happened before can happen again. The first condition, however, is justice. Justice means giving each person and each people, Israeli and Palestinian, what is rightfully theirs.

"There must also be forgiveness, because we are deeply shaped by our memories. We are, in a way, what we remember. There were mistakes on both sides. The challenge is not to erase our memory, but to purify it. We must remember what happened, acknowledge the suffering and injustices of the past, but without allowing that memory to become a source of perpetual hatred and revenge.

"Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor denying justice. It means refusing to allow our wounds to prevent a different future. We all have to find the courage to forgive and to begin again. When we have justice and forgiveness, genuine reconciliation becomes possible."

1. The Patriarch Jacob & The "Land of Israel" (~4,000 Years Ago / ~1800–2000 BCE)

• How the Name Started: Biblical history traces the Jewish people back to the patriarch Jacob, who was given the name Israel ("one who strives with God"). His twelve sons became the leaders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (the Israelites).
• The Native Name: Long before outside empires ruled the region, the native Jewish population called their homeland Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel). This created a thousands-year-old link between the people, their name, and their land.

2. Jewish Kingdoms & Local Demographics (~3,000 to 3,300 Years Ago / ~1000–1300 BCE)

• Ancient Sovereignty: Archaeological discoveries—like the Merneptah Stele (an ancient Egyptian stone slab from ~1208 BCE)—confirm that "Israel" existed in the land over 3,200 years ago. The Israelites established the United and Divided Kingdoms (Israel and Judah) around 1000 BCE, maintaining a Jewish majority and self-rule for centuries.
• How Demographics Shifted: The population remained mostly Jewish until the Roman Empire brutally crushed two major Jewish rebellions: the Great Revolt (70 CE) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (135 CE). Massive Roman expulsions, forced conversions, Byzantine rule, and the Arab-Islamic conquests of the 7th century slowly changed the majority population over centuries from Jewish to Christian, and eventually to Muslim Arab.
• DNA & Ancestry: Modern DNA studies show that even when populations changed their religion or language over centuries, their underlying genetic ancestry stayed connected to the ancient Levant. Changing beliefs did not wipe out their ethnic Jewish and Levantine DNA.

3. Colonial Renaming by Foreign Empires (~3,200 Years Ago to 135 CE)

• The Philistine Connection: The word Palestine comes from Peleshet, referring to the Philistines—an ancient Aegean seafaring people who lived along the coast (in areas like Gaza and Ashkelon) around 1200 BCE. Ancient Greek writers like Herodotus later used Palaistine as a regional label for that coastline.
• Rome’s Administrative Trick: In 135 CE, after crushing the Jewish revolt, Roman Emperor Hadrian decided to punish the Jews by wiping their name off the map. He officially renamed the province of Judea to Syria Palaestina—co-opting the older coastal name to erase the Jewish connection to the land.

4. Architectural History: Construction of the Dome of the Rock (688–691 CE)

• Lack of Early Islamic Engineering: When Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ordered the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 688 CE, Islam was only roughly 60 years old. Because no distinct "Islamic architecture" or specialized engineering tradition existed yet, the ruling Caliphate relied on the vast plunder and wealth of their newly conquered territories to hire non-Muslim regional experts.
• Non-Muslim Skilled Labor Force:
  • Byzantine Christian Craftsmen: The vast majority of master stonemasons, architects, and mosaic artists were local Byzantine Christians trained in Greco-Roman traditions. These were the exact same artisan guilds that built Jerusalem's major Christian monuments, such as the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
  • Persian & Egyptian Artisans: Egyptian laborers provided heavy structural engineering, while artisans from former Persian (Sasanian) lands contributed metalwork and glass mosaic craftsmanship.
• Borrowing Byzantine Blueprints: The master builders used established Byzantine Christian structural designs—specifically a circular central dome set inside an octagonal floor plan using mathematical ratios—and repurposed salvaged marble columns taken from earlier Roman and Christian ruins.
• Supervised Visual Program: While non-Muslim craftsmen executed the physical construction, Umayyad supervisors (Raja ibn Haywah and Yazid ibn Salam) directed them to follow a strictly Islamic visual design: banning any human or animal figures and replacing them with scrolling vines, jewels, crowns, and sweeping Arabic Kufic calligraphy.

5. Foreign Monarchy: Jordan’s Royal Family From Saudi Arabia (~1921 CE)

• The Hashemite Dynasty: The ruling family of Jordan (the Hashemites) was not native to the region or the Levant. They originated from the Hejaz region of Arabia (in modern-day Saudi Arabia), where they were the traditional Hashemite guardians of Mecca.
• British Imperial Border-Drawing: After World War I, Britain dismantled the Ottoman Empire and partitioned the Middle East. In 1921, Britain carved out the Emirate of Transjordan (75% of the original Palestine Mandate territory east of the Jordan River) and placed King Abdullah I—an Arabian Hashemite prince—on the throne as a reward for the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans.
• 1948 Occupation: When King Abdullah I’s Arab Legion invaded and annexed the West Bank in 1948, it was a foreign Hashemite monarchy from Arabia expanding its kingdom west of the Jordan River, rather than an indigenous local state being formed.

6. Language Differences & Local Identity (~115 Years Ago / ~1911 CE)

• Linguistic Adaptation (Palestine vs. Filastin): Because standard Arabic lacks a /p/ sound, local Arabic speakers adapted the foreign colonial name Palestine into Filastin (or Falasteen). Exonyms shifting phonetically across languages is standard in world history (e.g., Egypt vs. Misr).
• Early 20th-Century Identity Roots: A distinct Palestinian regional identity began forming in the late Ottoman Empire and grew under the British Mandate (1920–1948) through local newspapers (like Falastin in 1911), community councils, and civic groups.
• 1948–1967 (A Multi-Nation Conflict): After the 1948 war, the conflict was mainly fought between Israel and surrounding Arab nations. During this time, the Arabian-origin Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ruled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza, framing the issue as a broad Arab–Israeli war.

7. Cold War Shift & The PLO Strategy (~59 Years Ago / ~1967 CE)

• Reframing the Narrative: After Arab nations lost the 1967 Six-Day War, Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—with backing from Cold War advisers—rebranded their movement. They shifted the message from a broad, multi-nation Arab war against Israel into a local, anti-colonial national liberation struggle.
• Diplomatic Impact: This strategic pivot effectively shifted global and United Nations focus onto Palestinian self-determination, statehood, and human rights.

Fact-Check Summary for Class Discussion

1. Primacy of Jewish Identity over Democracy:

2. Peace as a Means Rather Than an End:

3. Rejection of the Independent Existence of Arab States:

4. War as a Foundational State:

5. Self-Reliance and Severing Dependence on the United States:

6. Absolute Priority for Initiative and Offense over Defense:

7. Forward Defense:

8. Internalizing the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Permanent Israeli-Arab Conflict:

9. Settlement and Civilians as a Central Component of Security:

10. Priority for Industrial-Defense Independence:

These are the last words of a 15 year old girl before the IDF murdered her. Various Zionists on this sub still justify her murder while the rest are so contemptuous of her life as she is ‘only’ a Palestinian that they don’t and will never condemn her murder or the murder of 20,000 other Palestinian children.

The movie is a complete hoax, and Netanyahu wants everyone involved arrested and leaking top secret info…?

Maybe Netanyahu suffered brain damage when that Iranian rocket almost killed him…