The Gaza Strip
Israeli/Arab Conflict in Palestine: How Did It Start? A Historical Review, Part One
Before getting into the historical background of ongoing conflict in Palestine, the reader should be cautioned about bias arising from inflammatory news clips, social media posts and political statements. False or misleading information, even photos or videos, have been disseminated by various official and nonofficial sources on both sides, exacerbating longstanding polarization and hatred and leading to more violence.
The report below (video) unveils a number of falsely portrayed scenes widely distributed on social media. If you think you know what is going on in Palestine because you “saw it on TV,” please take the time to watch this before continuing.
A prime example is the widely spread story of the beheading of Israeli babies. The story was found to have originated from Israeli extremist David Ben Zion, with no further confirmation. I quote Rozali Telbis on this:
Multiple mainstream outlets — including U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman — parroted the claim that Hamas beheaded 40+ Israeli babies, and The Grayzone did some digging into the veracity of these claims, and they identified David Ben Zion at the center of the story. Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army, told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies.” The Grayzone found that Ben Zion allegedly incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank just earlier this year.
A video clip of Ben Zion’s statement can be found in the Grayzone article.
Let us try to proceed with some sobriety, objectivity and compassion for all those involved and try to understand what is behind the current explosion of violence. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what got all this started. Here’s an outline for this series:
Part 1: The Gaza Strip
Part 2: Israeli Military Policy Since 2006—The Dahiya Docrtine
Part 3: The Rise of Zionism and the Creation of the State of Israel
Part 4: Sabbataen Frankist Illuminism and Labor Zionism
Part One
What is the Gaza Strip and why did Hamas break through the Gaza Barrier?
It’s amazing that all my life I’ve heard of the Gaza Strip, heard about conflict there and I never knew what it was, even though growing up Christian I was somewhat familiar with the geography of the Middle East, at least in Biblical times. I wonder how many people are as ignorant as I was. From the looks of things I would guess a great many.
AJ+, which describes itself as “a global news community for the connected generation,” has a number of well made videos explaining the geography and historical context of Gaza and it’s relation to Israel and wider Palestine. You may be in for a shock (as I was) as you watch this 4 minute video explaining how Gaza came to be.
To sum things up, 70% of Gazans are refugees and their descendants. But wait! Why are they refugees and what chased them there? Answer, they fled to that tiny southwestern corner of the country to escape the rabid violence of encroaching Jews from Europe, hoping to find safety. Why did I never hear about this in Sunday School or on the news when I was a growing up?
Then what happened in 1967? Israel began military rule over Gaza. I guess that’s what they mean by “occupied.” Why did I never get that before? Oh, and then they gave part of the tiny, crowded territory to Jewish settlers. Jews who didn’t have anywhere else to go? Even though Jews had already taken over most of Palestine?
Later I will get into just why foreign Jews from Europe invaded Palestine. It’s a long, rarely told story, and I don’t just mean the often harped about Holocaust. But bear with me. We have a lot to learn together.
So then in the early 90s Israel instituted a “closure policy” restricting movement of Palestinians in or out. Wow! What started out as a huge refugee camp of fleeing Palestinians is really beginning to look like a prison.
In 2005, the Israel government decided to move Jewish citizens out of Gaza in spite of the ardent protests and resistance of the Jewish settlers. Why did they do that? Was it just a coincidence that the next year the Palestinian group known as Hamas, that has a military arm and fights the occupation, won the election in Gaza? And that this provided an excuse to make life miserable for the Palestinian people living there by bombing their only electric plant and restricting food and fuel? And that since there were no longer any Jews in Gaza it was a safe operation because “dangerous, despicable Arab civilians” deserve to suffer or be killed? Even if they’re 2 years old.
(I’m not suggesting the Israeli government really cares about it’s own people—later I’ll tell why—but I’m sure it cares about it’s public image. Starving the Arab men, women and children, smashing their homes to smithereens and killing them indiscriminately is kosher. Openly targeting Jews is not.)
Though Hamas seeks liberation and restoration of their homeland through fighting, other methods for calling attention to the disregard for human lives and dignity in Gaza have been tried.
Charles Wright explains the situation vividly:
Lest it be forgotten, five years ago, the people of Gaza launched an unarmed, popular, and grassroots protest movement near the Gaza security fence. Dubbed the Great March of Return, these mass Palestinian demonstrations aimed inter alia at lifting the illegal and inhuman Israeli blockade, which after almost two decades of economic strangulation rendered the Gaza Strip—in the words of a few reputable observers—a “sinking ship” (International Committee of the Red Cross), “unlivable” (UN Country Team), a “ghetto” (Ha’aretz Editorial Board), and a “toxic slum”, in which Palestinians “are caged … from birth to death” (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ziad Rifai).
This sounds a lot like the way Jews were often confined to ghettos in Europe. In fact, a revolt of a Jewish ghetto near Warsaw where the Nazis had imprisoned 450,000 Jews was the largest uprising of Jews in Europe and at first put the Germans on the flight, though after a month of fighting, the uprising had been quelled.
This is a striking parallel to what began on October 7, 2023 with Hamas breaking through the confining security wall that surrounds Gaza.
The video below takes a look at what happened that day after 16 years of military siege and more than a decade of Israeli repeated bombings and military operations against an imprisoned population.
To quote Chris Hedges:
The indiscriminate shootings of Israelis by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations, the kidnapping of civilians, the barrage of rockets into Israel, drone attacks on a variety of targets from tanks to automated machine gun nests, are the familiar language of the Israeli occupier. Israel has spoken this blood-soaked language of violence to the Palestinians since Zionist militias seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine…
Several persons, including David Icke whom I don’t generally listen to as I don’t care for his style, have made the observation that the Israeli military is one of the most sophisticated in the world and was even warned by Egypt of an impending attack from Hamas. Other details also point to that Israeli military leaders must have known that an attack was coming and let it happen so that they’d have an excuse to declare war against Palestinians, the same way U.S. leadership allowed, even provoked, the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor. The latter is established fact. Many similar examples can be provided in history.
Icke, and others, make what to me is an important point: in war, it’s always the people on both sides who suffer. But they aren’t the ones who decide upon and plan wars. The ones who are responsible sit in their palaces or mansions or capitols, sipping tea and spewing nonsense about justice and right.
I’ll go deeper into the history of the region in the next post, covering British schemes for defeating the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Zionism, and establishment of the British Mandate of Palestine and later the Israeli State.
Stay tuned!
Note: (added Oct 27, 2023) It has come to my attention that my mention of David Icke could be interpreted as a form of endorsement. It is not. I simply felt that what he had to say about this situation in particular could be accurate, and apropo. However, I do not follow Icke and do not wish to be misunderstood. As I mentioned, other persons besides Icke have observed that Egypt had warned Israeli intelligence of an impending attack by Hamas, and that surveillance of the wall had been suspiciously suspended when the attack occurred. I have not looked into these things personally. Apparently, the question of whether the Israeli government intentionally allowed the attack to be successful is hotly debated. I am not going to enter the fray. However, it should be noted that governments allowing or even provoking an enemy attack in order to have an excuse to brutally respond or enter a war is found everywhere in history. Pearl Harbor is a prime example, but many others could be cited. On Pearl Harbor, it has been noted that similar to Israel’s response in Gaza, the casualties for the Japanese greatly exceeded those of the US. “The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor naval base killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians. The U.S. bombing of the city of Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75,000 people, almost all of them civilians…”
Tobin Owl is an independent researcher/writer. Over the past three years he’s conducted in-depth investigation focusing on the history of modern medicine, medical science, geopolitical conspiracy and the environment. Articles written prior to his move to Substack are found on his website Cry For The Earth