Haters of Israel have a growing list of terms which they throw about frequently in attempts to demonize the Jewish State. The ugly list bears no resemblance to the truth but this kind of hatred is morbidly stupid, not just blind and deaf.
Here’s a review of some of the choice expressions with some basic facts about the slander.
“Genocide”
This is a particularly disgusting one, as it goes to the core of anti-Semitic hatred against Israel. Jews just went through a genocide of one-third of its population in Nazi Germany less than 100 years ago in a crime in which Palestinians were complicit (meeting repeatedly with Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as convincing the British to not comply with the mission of the Mandate to limit the entry of Jews fleeing the Holocaust). Stating that Israel is committing genocide is a vicious attempt to belittle the Holocaust and argue that Jews are worthy of the anti-Semitism hurled at them.
The application of the term itself is insane, as the Arab population growth in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has surpassed the growth rates of Arabs in all the surrounding countries.
“Ethnic Cleansing”
Like “genocide,” this is an attempt to invert the charge from the Arab and Muslim nations that ethnically-cleansed around one million Jews from their lands since the founding of Israel. As noted above, the population in the area under the 1922 Palestine Mandate has skyrocketed. Even in Jerusalem, the population growth rate of Arabs surpasses that of Jews since Israel reunified the city.
“Apartheid”
Israel gave citizenship to every non-Jew when the state was founded. It has non-Jewish supreme court judges, members of parliament and generals in the army. It allows Muslims to pray at Judaism’s holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount and to build mosques and minarets around the country, as well as to wear hijabs and eat halal meat. The term makes absolutely no sense in the most liberal country in the region for one thousand miles.
“Colonialist”
Jews lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. Judaism is the only religion that is tied to a specific land, the land of Israel. It is not possible to colonize a place which ancestors lived in for centuries and which is the center of daily religious focus.
Further, when international law split the Ottoman Empire into different French and British mandates including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, they did not send their own French and British citizens to live in the land. The Jews who moved to Palestine from the 1922 mandate until the founding of the country in 1948 came from dozens of countries, with the Jews of England and France making up a paltry sum. Today, the majority of the Jews in Israel came from the Muslim countries which expelled their Jews including Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria and Iraq, alongside a sizable group from Russia and Ukraine.
“Europeans”
This is a code to say that Jews are “White” and part of the oppressor class in today’s woke terminology. Most of the Jews in Israel are actually Black and Brown from Africa as listed above, including over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews.
“Arab Land”
Sorry, but Israel is not part of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s also not part of the League of Arab States. It’s also not European nor African. It’s a little swatch of land connection many continents.
Are the people who use this expression arguing that land itself has the DNA of a particular people? Would the same people say that Europe is “White Land” or Africa is “Black Land?” If someone were to argue that some lands truly are part and parcel of a specialized group of people, they would have to admit that the Land of Israel is “Jewish Land.”
“Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Many anti-Zionists consider the entirety of the State of Israel to be “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The more moderate part of the Israel-haters consider the West Bank and Gaza to be “OPT.”
Perhaps there will one day be an independent State of Palestine like there is currently a Jewish State of Israel. But that day is not today, as the Palestinian Arabs have refused to agree to the various peace offers Israel put before them. Until that time, the only Palestinian territories are the ones that Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Areas A and B in the West Bank which cover 86% of West Bank Arabs. By definition, those aren’t “occupied” and are run by Palestinians.
“Threaten Al Aqsa”
This is a term that extremists use to rile up riots against Jews around the world. Israel has not made any moves against the al Aqsa Mosque, and welcomes Muslims to pray peacefully in their holy site. Still, there are many Jews which are appalled by the anti-Semitic edict which prohibits Jews from also praying on the Temple Mount. Just as the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron has space and time for people of both religions to pray, Jews seek a similar accommodation. In no manner shape of form do they want any harm to befall the Islamic holy site. Stating that Jews are threatening the site has generated multiple riots and killed hundreds over the years and is dangerous and inflammatory.
“Expulsions”
As reviewed in “ethnic cleansing,” Israelis have not and are not seeking to get rid of the Arab population. There have been “evictions” of people who live in a house illegally and “expulsions” of a select number of terrorists over the decades. But the general usage of the term has no bearing on reality.
“Crimes against Humanity”
The term “crimes against humanity” has a particular definition covering genocide, slavery, apartheid and torture. As reviewed above, these do not apply to Israel. The country does its utmost to have a peaceful society for all of its citizens with a wide range of freedoms not found elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
“War Crimes”
Israel is in an asymmetric war against a terrorist group that fights from schools and hospitals and has a network of tunnels beneath houses and mosques. It attempts to use a targeted approach to fight against Arab terrorists who deliberately attack Israeli civilians. It is an approach that will most likely be adopted by other parts of the world that seek to manage wars against terrorist groups embedded with civilians (who support them).
“Open air prison,” “Apartheid Wall” and “Collective Punishment”
When the Palestinian Arabs rejected Israel’s peace proposal in 2000 that gave them almost everything that they wanted, they launched the Two Percent War which is generously marketed as the “Second Intifada,” in which they went on a terrorism campaign against ice cream stores, buses, restaurants and any soft targets populated with Jews. To stop the barbaric wave of hundreds of murders, Israel constructed a security barrier roughly along the 1949 Armistice Lines which anti-Zionists call an “apartheid wall.” The barrier is 90% fence and only 10% wall and built specifically because of Palestinian terrorism.
When Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip in 2005 it did not place a blockade on the area. Only after Palestinians voted the political-terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament in 2006 with the most anti-Semitic charter ever written, followed by Hamas’s take-over of Gaza in June 2007, and the attempted import of missiles and attack against Israel in 2008, did Israel resort to a full blockade of the terrorist enclave. Even though anti-Zionists call Gaza the world’s largest “open air prison” and a form of “collective punishment,” the actions were deemed legal by the United Nations (no friend of Israel) which commissioned the Palmer Report. That report stated that it “concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal… Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
“Settler” and “Settlement”
The term “settler” has morphed into something anti-Semitic.
Once upon a time, an Israeli who developed a new outpost east of the Green Line (EGL) was called a “settler” because he and she established a new settlement. But people who wanted to see a new Arab state of Palestine without the presence of a single Jew changed and weaponized the meaning of “settler.” A Jew buying an apartment in an existing building in an existing town – even Jerusalem – somehow became a “settler.” The media has now gotten to the point where Jews who are just visiting EGL including the Western Wall, are called “settlers.” The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas calls the entirety of Israel a “painful settlement.“
“Zionist” and “Zionism”
Zionism was and is a two-part movement: a deliberate action against the scourge of pervasive anti-Semitism through the encouragement and support of 1) Jews moving back to their ancestral land and 2) to reestablish sovereignty in the Jewish holy land.
In 1975, with dozens of Arab and Muslim lands holding oil barrels over the world economy, the United Nations passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. While cancelled in 1991 due to the efforts of the US, it was revived in the August 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism. It has since been picked up broadly by Israel haters ranging from the far right to the alt left.
The extremist media empires like The New York Times have adopted the smear, and state openly that “Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies.” Zionism is rapidly becoming a curse word, where left-wing schools are preaching that in order to be an anti-Racist one needs to be an anti-Zionist. This gaslighting campaign has corralled Jews to join the anti-Israel crusade, forgetting that the entire purpose of Zionism was to fight anti-Semitism and to have the same self-governing status that they seek for the stateless Arabs of Palestine.
The anti-Zionist lexicon is changing the very meaning of words in an aggravated assault against the Jewish State and Jews around the world. Everyone should readily recognize the mendacious slander and call out the perpetrators for their libel.
Related First One Through articles:
Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”
English Lesson: Eviction, Expulsion and Ethnic Cleansing
Palestinians Seek Mercy For Being a Menace
UN’s Confusion on the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
Linda Sarsour as Pontius Pilate
Bernie Sanders’ Antisemitic and Anti-Zionist Friends
To Answer the Question Tying Anti-Semitism, Understand The Two Types of Anti-Zionists
First One Through videos:
{Reposted from the FirstOneThrough website}