Israel’s History, Rhetoric and Actions: Call Out the Hypocrisy

• Israel has a history of disproportionate violence that should be known universally.
• The leaders have historically made statements which violate the rights of Palestinians.
• Israel’s past, rhetoric, and present deserve scrutiny, especially given a heavily biased American media.

This is updated from November 2023.

Some events, with death tolls, are below:

Date: December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009: air and ground assault in Gaza

Palestinian: 1434, 960 civilians

Israeli: Hamas rockets killed no people.

Date: January 2012 to November 14, 2012 (deaths by fire)

Palestinian:78

Israeli: 1

Date: November 212

Palestinian: 160, including many children, 3 journalists (defended by Israel as "relevant to terror activity" (!l))

Israeli: 6

Date: June 12 - July 31, 2014

Palestinian: 1400, mostly civilians and hundreds of women and children

Israeli: 3 civilians

Date: October 7 - mid-November

Palestinian: 10,000 (latest count 30,000, or 1 in 80 Gazans, 17,000 children orphaned or separated from their parents, perhaps 100,000 dead, injured or missing)

Israeli: 1400

 
Several extremist statements made by those who would serve, were serving, or did serve as prime
ministers are below. More statements from the current conflict are listed separately.

After the 967 war (Later Prime Minister) Golda Meir tells Labor Party colleagues they should “keep the Gaza
Strip ‘while getting rid of its Arabs.’” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and others agreed.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol said that they could not allow those expelled to return because ”we can not increase the Arab population in Israel” (including the occupied territories in the nation of Israel in
this statement).

1995 (Former Prime Minister) Shimon Peres says there will be no Palestinian state.

June 2014 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he knows Hamas was responsible for three Israeli
boys’ deaths (which is a lie, they were not responsible, which he knew), before starting on a rampage that kills
1400 Palestinians.

Hypocrisy in the Current Conflict and the Historical Framing of Violence

The brutality of the Israel government has been described. Described below is the double standard in
descriptions of the current conflict, or historically.

• Numerous American celebrities called for a ceasefire, describing the toll of Israel’s assault on
Gaza (demonstrates an understanding of the brutal violence).
• The Bolivian government breaks diplomatic ties (again.). Numerous other leaders globally
speak out also.
• Queen Rania of Jordan speaks of the hypocrisy in the way the suffering of a family of Israelis is
viewed versus the death of a family of Palestinians.
• An apartheid state is how Gaza has been described, including by Amnesty International.
Netanyahu rejected the claim. Is he arguing it is far worse? Not only are the Palestinians
concentrated and kept there, they are also subject to brutal invasions and destruction of their
land and people.
• Netanyahu calls on the United Nations Secretary General to step down because he recognizes
the long-time frustration of Gazans (who have had their homes, belongings, and community
destroyed.) Is Israel forgetting its own history of the Holocaust? Is it rejecting the violence by
Jewish people of those who rose up in the Jewish ghettos, after being similarly deprived?
• 200 hostages – Hundreds die in America each day, perhaps 300 from drug overdoses and heart
attacks. 20,000 die of starvation every day. Are the hostages people of moral caliber of Martin
Luther King, Jr., or Nelson Mandela? Why did this immediately receive disproportionate and
heavy press?
• Is the worst harm done by Western nations to themselves? One LinkedIn post mentions that
over 1000 people more died in January 2023 versus December 2022 (over 20 percent) in Israel.
A small percentage of deaths were attributed to COVID in December. Regardless, this followed a
major push for vaccination (over 700,000 occurred in January.) If Israel’s death rate rose by 5 or
10 percent over a year (over 2015-2019), would this not be many thousand additional Israeli
deaths due to something relevant to the government? Dr. Aseem Malhotra on Tucker Carlson
mentions a jump of 25 percent in heart attacks in Israel from statistics showing this increase.
Worth noting also is that an Israeli newspaper report said 1 in 4 Israelis were getting COVID
shortly after being vaccinated. I think this was within a two-week period. However, the link to
the article does not work anymore.
• Wipe Israel off the face of the Earth is unacceptably radical statement. However wiping
Palestine off the face of the Earth, including fully rejecting a one (with full and universal
democratic and civil rights) and a two-state solution, and destroying Gaza is acceptable. Why?
• Dubious claim to the land – Norman Finklestein debunked documentation critical to the Jewish
claim that the land in Palestine was mostly unpopulated upon their arrival (the claim is from
“Time Immemorial,” a book largely praised by Jewish intellectuals including Saul Bellow, Martin
Pertz, and Barbara Tuchman.) Finkelstein was then pushed out of three universities, despite one
recommending him for tenure; other academics have also lost jobs after speaking for Palestinian
rights. Even if they were the original settlers, it is worth asking if they believe that the first
residents of any land have rights to it, e.g., have they been working to return the United States
to the native American tribes?
• Netanyahu Extends Power -- Why was Netanyahu attempingt to reform the judicial system
threatening democratic rule (protested by Israelis) not met with the same response as President
Manuel Zelaya, who was flown out of the country (overthrown) supposedly to protect the
people from an illegal attempt to extend his time in office? Zelaya was at least raising the
minimum wage, with Honduras and Haiti often leading the continent in labor rights. (This is not
advocating such a step in Israel, simply pointing to hypocrisy.)
• “Mowing the lawn” (the self- described Israeli term for brutal assaults on the Gazans) appears
well accepted in America. Would mowing Israel’s lawn meet the same reaction? (This is not
negating the human rights of all people, instead pointing out the hypocrisy of enshrining them
for some).
• Acceptance of the Israeli state – The United Nations drew borders for both a Palestinian and
Israeli state. The Palestinians can agree to different borders than the Green Line based on the
wall, security barriers, and settlements (condemned by the Goldstone report), post 1967 lines, etc. However, is it
reasonable to not accept an Israeli state, in the absence of Palestinian sovereignty? Israel still
would be expected to respect human rights, and be responsible for their violation.
• Why does Israel get American arms despite this assault (and the Goldstone report, among other
documentation of war crimes)?

Nuclear weapons

General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, described Israel’s nuclear weapons as
“dangerous to the extreme” (Chomsky).

The 1974 United Nations General Assembly called for a “weapons of mass destruction” free zone. There
was overwhelming support for such a zone in the Middle East (Chomsky.) Washington agreed formally in
May 2010 at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference, however adding numerous conditions
unlikely to happen.

United States role

U.S, law requires that “no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which
engages in a consistent pattern of a gross violation of internationally recognized human rights.” Israel is
guilty of this pattern (Chomsky and above.) How does the Goldstone report (an effort led by a Jewish
person) with its extensive documentation of Palestinian destruction and deaths factored in?