It’s a hard one lots of video and propaganda coming out of all channels this will be a hard one to figure out what is real. 

 Menachem Begin, Deir Yassin, Nakba. Darby, Scofield, and [Christian Zionism](https://balfourproject.org/the-road-to-balfour-the-history-of-christian-zionism-by-stephen-sizer-2/). Balfour Declaration. Justice Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter. The list goes on.

Some [quick facts on the Nakba](https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba) 

 Here are my 2 sats [811476] worth. Most people are mostly right about their side and mostly wrong about the other. Layer that with the activities I’d murders, racists, rapists, and widespread fear to get the whole situation.

We need more 🫂 and less “I will tell you what to do”

Book recommendation: Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel #bookstr 

 For starters. If someone hasn’t lived the situation. Their opinion is lacking. It’s tainted by propaganda. 

I lived in Jordan my whole life, the stones of my school has bullet holes in it from the Palestinians-Jordanian civil war. 

We know the true history from the stories we listen to from our parents unfiltered. 

You have no idea how fucked up the situation is. 

But the most important part is, what everyone need to understand is that the people and the government are two separate things. Israelis and zionists are not the same thing, Palestinians and Fath and Hamas are not the same thing either.

If Zionist really want peace, they can prove it and allow Palestinians to live, and open back the country for the Palestinians who left. FYI, even Americans with Palestinian heritage are not allowed to enter Israel, it’s extremely difficult to do so. 

Palestinians live like they are in a prison. What do you expect from a cat trapped in a corner fearing for its life other than scratches. 

 I couldn't agree more, thank you for posting this. I view "Israel" as a modern Apartheid state, and Gaza as basically an open-air prison. Americans (especially the Christians) have been so propagandized about this, largely through the false and dangerous perspective call premillennial dispensationalism, that it's near impossible to "red pill" them without being labeled an "anti-semite" or hearing "that's the kind of thinking that led to the holocaust!" The program to equate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism has been tragically successful here. It's deeply troubling. 

 I am having trouble parsing what’s real from the massive amounts of propaganda that is being put out now.

My understanding, prior to the invasion and subsequent horror, is that Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas. They are their elected leaders and polls from as recent as June 2023 show great public support for them, with less than 15% preferring Fatah. If this is who they voted for and still support, one can only conclude that the vast majority support the annihilation of Israel.

Obviously there are historical reasons for their support. What we see now, from both sides, seems to be the same ancient lies, told in a modern way.

Objectively, The territory of Gaza was lost in 1967, when Israel captured it in war. By the laws of war, Palestine doesn’t technically exist at all and Palestinians are occupying land that is no longer theirs. Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a platform of ‘death to Jews’. This is all objectively true. None of it, however, says what we should do about it. 

So I err on the side of caution, don’t get involved. Have kindness and warmth for those effected, pray for them, but otherwise, there isn’t anything any of us can do. 

 One question you might consider pursuing objectively, is, "were any of the land seizures just? Was there jus ad bellum (justice in going to war) and has there been jus in bellus (justice in its conduct)? In war (jus in bellus) there is never one side that is blameless and another that is fully to be blamed (I'm looking at you, Treaty of Verseilles). But to the question of how and why the war started...that's where I think we can see clear injustice and on only one side.

I appreciate your careful stance either way. And thank you for posting. 

 This is a question I can answer objectively because I’m an historian. While I didn’t focus my studies on this part of the world, the history is key to the current crisis.

The Israelis captured the Gaza Strip and other lands in the area during the Six Day war in June 1967. The reason for going to war then was just. Egyptian forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula. So yes, when a country is invaded by a foreign army, a war is just. The capture of land in a war is just conduct. The Israelis then held the land during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when a coalition of Arab Nations attacked them. My reckoning is that by the laws of war, this is incontrovertibly Israeli land. Each war that involved Israel has been started by the Arab Nations in this region.

If we are being honest, it has nothing to do with the land and everything to do with religion. They hate each other for worshipping a different God. That’s the real problem and it’s sad. 

 I think you need to go further back. 

The [Nakba](https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba) was certainly not just. And those executing were certainly not doing it for religious reasons. I don't see how anyone can justify an Apartheid state or an open-air prison like in Gaza.

Murray Rothbard, [War Guilt in the Middle East](https://mises.org/library/war-guilt-middle-east)

See also, Alison Weir, [Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel](https://amzn.to/45Gtfgl) 

 I thought I was being generous by going back to anytime before 2005, when Israelis left Gaza completely. The Gaza Strip was offered to Jordan and Egypt who refused to take it. It has been under the control of Hamas, a terrorist organization that was elected in a landslide victory in 2006. They enjoy massive support from the Palestinian people. Their charter quite literally calls for the extermination of Jews and the Jewish state.

I think it is shameful to draw a moral equivalence between the intentional murder of thousands of civilians and the situation in Gaza. Hamas intentionally kills Jews because they hate them. They went into Israel to kill people. There was no military purpose in this, nothing to be gained from this. I saw the videos that Hamas released on their own social media. This was barbarism on a civilian population. They raped and murdered human beings and were proud of it. There is no moral equivalence to be drawn. Even taking a middle line on this seems like an act of evil. 

These are sad and dark days, and there are more to come.