The mainstream media is relentless, but despite their continuous assertions, Israel has not inflicted catastrophic suffering on Gazans, there is no famine in Gaza, and Israelis in Judea and Samaria have not depopulated Arab towns. Sadly, some American Jews have bought these lies, and are even peddling them to young, impressionable Jews. In the J-Street model, they often hide their attacks behind a claim of being pro-Israel and simply wanting to help right the misguided ship, knowing what is truly best for Israel.
An example of this is history professor Jeffrey Freedman. In May, 2024 he published an article in the Commentator, the YU student newspaper (“Can We Talk about Israel?”), which elicited two responses. One, by Phillip Dolitsky, a recent YU grad and military strategist and national security researcher, positioned the current Gaza war in historical context and showed the flaws of Freedman’s arguments (“Letter to The Editor: Yes, Let’s Talk About Israel”). The other (by me) pointed out some of his factual errors (“Letter to The Editor: Dialogue Requires Being Factual”). Both were polite, well-reasoned, and were devoid of ad hominem attacks. Nonetheless, Freedman, in a response to our letters, doubled down in his attacks on Israel (“Letter to the Editor: How We Speak to Each Other: Israel, Antisemitism and Civility”).
Because it is important that people be aware of Freedman’s dangerous positions and also know the true facts, I am writing this article.
There were two problematic areas of accusations that Freedman made – one related to Gaza, the other to Judea and Samaria (J&S).
Judea and Samaria – Fact from Fiction
In his original piece, Freedman asserts, among other egregious claims, that “As of December 2023, some twenty villages in the central West Bank had been either partially or completely emptied of their inhabitants in the previous months.” In my response, I explained that these are trumped up claims, a veritable blood libel, with no basis in reality. In his response, Freedman explained, “As it happens, my source was a series of articles by David Shulman published in ‘The New York Review of Books.’ …. He was an eyewitness of the expulsions that he described.”
His providing sources makes it much easier to trace the fabrication. In the November–December, 2023 issue of The New York Review of Books, Shulman describes supposed murders by “settlers.” In fact. there is no evidence of any killing by a civilian Jew of an Arab in J&S in the two years other than in self-defense. Zero. What of the 20 villages? Freedman indeed had lifted the line straight from Shulman who wrote: “At the latest count, some twenty villages in the central West Bank have been partially or entirely emptied of their inhabitants.”
Unlike what Freedman wrote, Shulman does not claim (in the Nov-Dec 2023 issue) to have witnessed these expulsions. In the April-May, 2024 issue he rants and raves against “settlers,” and asserts that “We know of at least sixteen Palestinian villages that have been evacuated over the last few months because of ceaseless settler violence backed by the army….” It is not clear if these are 16 of the previous 20 or an additional 16. Again, he does NOT claim to be an eye-witness, and this article is mostly an irrational screed of “never-Bibi” and “this right-wing government must go.” Readers are welcome to look up Shulman’s articles online – and Freedman’s accounts – and see how they compare to Freedman’s description of them.
If Shulman was not an eye witness, where did he get this claim from? It seems his source is the extreme left-wing B’Tselem organization. On their website, they list 20 “Isolated Palestinian communities and single-farm families forcibly transferred.” In other words, unlike what Shulman and Freedman imply, the topic is not “Palestinian villages” but places like Maktal Msallam and Wadi ‘Abayat that each had 1 (!) family living there and Atiriyah, Khallet al-Hamra, and Bariyet Hizma that each had two families. That is, five of the 20 had one or two families. I am not sure what Shulman or Freedman envision when they use the word “village,” but of these 20, only one had had a population over 200 and it was 40% minors. These were small clans of transient Bedouin squatters who occupied state land or land on the outskirts of a Jewish neighborhood and then eventually moved on. It is possible some moved early than planned following intimidation – I am not familiar with the specifics, but neither are Freedman or Shulman.
A Blood libel Is a Blood Libel
Freedman took umbrage with my use of the term “blood libel” regarding his accusations against Jews living (“settlers” in his article) in Judea and Samaria (J&S; “West Bank” in his article). As he is well aware, the original use of the term “blood libel” was the absurd claim that Jews used non-Jewish blood in the baking of matzah, a false charge made as a cover to engage in antisemitic violence. In recent years the term is sometimes used in reference to other false accusations that are similarly promulgated with the intent to harm falsely accused Jews. And when far-leftist and antisemitic organizations make these claims against Israelis living in J&S it can rightly be termed a “blood libel” in the modern sense.
Facts are important, but numbers are not the full story. If five villages were attacked or 20 were attacked it would still be an issue. The big picture is that these charges against the Jewish residents of J&S have no basis in reality, Freedman was not quoting an eye-witness, and these false accusations can and have resulted in real harm to individual Jews and to the State. Jews in J&S are defending themselves against a murderous terror organization on their doorsteps and need our support not accusations. An excellent exposé by Liel Leibovitz, published by Tablet, can be found online, entitled “The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers.’”
Gaza: Fact and Fabrication
Regarding the Gaza War, a war Israel did not want and did not initiate but is now morally and practically obligated to decisively win, Freedman’s accusations are flawed both factually and morally.
Freedman asserted that the IDF has “inflicted catastrophic suffering on the population of the [Gaza] strip,” and then regurgitates the litany of atrocities that Hamas PR regularly accuses Israel of committing, including the usual canard of huge numbers of civilian deaths, the majority of which are women and children, and the hysteria of an “impending famine.” I politely responded with the facts and explained that like the anti-Israel mainstream media, he was relying on data supplied by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. Thousands of the dead are actually Hamas terrorists, a distinction Hamas and Freedman fail to make. In response to a study that I cited that criticized the Hamas data, Freedman said it was released “after the publication of my [i.e., Freedman’s initial] piece.” It was. And another study was recently released by the Henry Jackson Society (entitled “Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza” by Andrew Fox) that similarly demonstrates the flaw in the Hamas numbers, numbers utilized without questioning by 98% of the media. Hamas was shown to have men listed as women, include natural deaths in the figures, fail to distinguish civilians from combatants, etc. It is irrelevant when these studies came out; any honest person should readily recognize, even without the benefit of a study, that the Hamas supplied numbers cannot be relied upon and bear little resemblance to reality. Not surprisingly, those who behead, rape, and kidnap, also lie.
For Freedman to make an equivalence and assert “Israeli claims … are, rather, counter-assertions, subject to doubt just like those coming from Gaza” is sad, almost-laughable, and far removed from reality. As in historical sources, some contemporary sources have more reliability than others, and an astute observer, or in this case any honest observer, can distinguish between them. Sure, Israeli claims may sometimes be erroneous, and certainly savvy observers should take claims made by all governments with some degree of skepticism, but to equate the validity of the intentional, egregious lies and distortions of Hamas with the usually transparent and factual Israeli claims is troubling and preposterous.
An example from early in the war saw the world blindly parroting the Hamas accusation that Israel had bombed al-Ahli Arab Hospital causing 500 deaths. It was quickly shown that Israel did not bomb the hospital but rather that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad had and that nowhere near 500 people died. There are numerous such examples and historically most Hamas claims are outright lies; anyone, intentionally or unintentionally, repeating them, as the mainstream media does, is acting as a PR agent for Hamas.
In response to Freedman’s claim about a “spreading famine” in Gaza, I noted that it has been “impending” for over a year. Despite the claims of the anti-Israel mobs, there is still no Gaza famine. The recent videos from Gaza again show well-dressed, well-fed people. Even the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in late June 2024 revised its assessment of the situation in Gaza claiming that the percentage of residents facing the most severe food shortages was only 15 percent, better than Honduras, Afghanistan, Yemen, and many other countries. In his response, he seems to admit there is no Gaza famine, so instead accuses Israel of causing “food insecurity” in Gaza. There may be some “food insecurity” (unfortunately, war is horrible for all parties involved), but “food insecurity” is not “famine” or “starvation,” and it is factually and morally wrong to state otherwise.
An excellent exposé can be found in this article: www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/fraudulent-case-against-violent-settlers.
Gaza: More than the Numbers
But it is more than just the facts. The main point is that Israel is not to blame for any of the food insecurity or other suffering. Israel has done what has rarely been done by other militaries – it has continued to provide food and energy to an enemy in time of war. Israel has received no credit – from the IPC, journalists, or Freedman –for preventing a famine, but that is what Israel has done, and the dreaded predictions of starvation never materialized. Based on the videos of the obscene “hostage release ceremonies,” it appears that the locals are well fed and the only ones starving are the hostages.
Rather than Freedman writing: “The spreading famine has prompted expressions of outrage from Western governments,” he should explain to his students and anyone who will listen that there is no famine, and that Israel has shown more compassion on an enemy population than probably any army in history.
Freedman accuses me of engaging in “a form of moral evasion” and takes me to task for being insensitive to the Gaza suffering. He is wrong. I acknowledge that the war has taken a toll on Gazan civilians; but I also know who is at fault. Freedman wrote that “the impossibility of obtaining precise numbers should not be used as an excuse to look away from the devastating carnage that is undoubtedly occurring.” And, he charges, I (and I suspect of others who disagree with him) am guilty of this. I find this charge to be offensive. Exact figures are not what determines responsibility, and are ultimately of less significance. Whether one innocent Gazan (however that term is defined) was killed or 100,000 were killed, it is absolutely clear and needs to be explained to the world, that every one of those casualties is on the head of Hamas and not Israel. Israel has the military superiority and the firepower to eliminate every living being in Gaza. Israel is not doing that and would not do that. Israel was brutally attacked and now must eliminate terrorists and terror infrastructure. Yet it is taking more precautions than almost any military in history in order to avoid collateral damage to civilians. Some might argue they are doing it so much as to be immorally risking the lives of Israelis at the expense of trying to prevent harm to Gazans. Israel distinguishes between Gazan militants and civilians in their attacks and stats; it is Hamas which makes no such distinction in their tactics or data.
Israel is not to blame for the “catastrophic suffering” (to use Freedman’s words) of the Gazans. That is where Freedman errs, even more than his misguided reliance on Hamas’s data. The detailed studies of the numbers are important and relevant (see “Media Spread Baseless Gaza Famine, Casualty Reports Despite Debunking Evidence”), but anyone with a moral compass understands who are the good guys and who are the terrorists without citing numbers. Hamas knows, and the world should understand, that if at any time Hamas would have released the hostages and ceased firing rockets aimed at civilian targets, not another Gazan would have been harmed. If Hamas would not operate out of hospitals, schools, and mosques, there would be fewer civilian casualties. Any and all Gazan suffering is the responsibility of Hamas and not Israel. Those of us who support Israel are not engaged in “moral evasion”; rather those who are implicating Israel for the Gazan suffering are engaged in factually inaccurate and morally-corrupt blame-shifting.
Freedman charges that “Zivotofsky uses it [charges of antisemitism] as a rhetorical weapon (criticisms of Israel are just variations on the theme of the medieval blood libel).” I never claimed that criticism of Israel is a blood-libel or antisemitic. I stand by my willingness to discuss criticisms of Israel, and there may legitimate criticisms. But such criticisms must be grounded in reality and in Jewish values. Attacks that play into the hands of our enemies and that have no basis in fact are indeed not legitimate. Freedman’s criticisms are fallacious, dangerous, and should be censured by the Jewish community, and by those who stand by Israel. Indeed, as he says, the stakes are high. Israel is being maligned by many, and true supporters of Israel are needed to help combat the lies, misinformation, and slander. It would be great if a respected historian would do that.
All Jews, and certainly a history professor, have a very important and real role to play in fighting antisemitism and supporting Israel. One way to do that is by teaching the accurate, truthful history of Israel and of the Middle East conflict and thereby presenting the justice of the Israeli position. Looking forward to Jews around the world standing by Israel, a decisive Israeli victory, peace in the region, and recognition of Israel’s moral integrity.
