the conflict in israel is complicated but not for the reason you might think. the real complexity lies in the fact that there’s far more propaganda and disinformation than actual reality being broadcast around the world and most of it is based on a complete lack of understanding of either the history or the situation on the ground.
people often say the only way to understand conflicts in the middle-east is to have a serious and detailed grasp of every historical event that’s ever happened. while that would be wonderful, it’s completely unrealistic. most people don’t have the time, energy or interest to know that much, especially about a part of the world they’ve probably never even considered visiting and have no connections to. that’s not to say we should give up on people knowing the history. it’s just that we spend a lot of time dwelling on the small details rather than telling the general historical story in a way people might have enough interest to remember it.
the other problem with the historical approach is that we often start in the wrong place. people frequently say “this didn’t just start on october 7” or “this didn’t start with the oslo accords” or any other part of the recent issues surrounding israel. and they’re absolutely right. but, for some reason, they pick another somewhat-random obscure date when something else happened that only people in the middle-east know the details of and that was also completely situated within a historical context they don’t actually explain. the only way we can solve that is to go back to the beginning. history doesn’t really start anywhere but we have to go back to a time long before the conflict existed or we have absolutely no hope of putting it in context. if you picked up the story of the second world war in 1943, it would look very much like the united states and russia were ganging up on germany to commit genocide. if you picked up the story of the korean peninsula in the 1970s, it would look like north korea was the victim of a global attack and just trying to stay alive. if you pick up the story of china in the 1950s, it would look like taiwan was an oppressed victim rather than the former government who decided to take over an island instead of giving up power. perspective truly matters when looking at context, time perspective more than anything else.
of course, if we go back to ancient times, people get bogged-down in the details and that’s an issue. the only way around that is to tell the story without getting distracted by all the other interesting things that happened. the greeks and persians and egyptians and nubians and babylonians and plenty of other groups have fascinating histories in this part of the world and they’re worth learning but they’re not exactly easy to get straight in your head all at once and most people don’t need to know about the rise and fall of the old kingdom of egypt or the life and times of cyrus the great if they’re trying to understand a modern conflict.
there’s also the confusion of ethics, morality and personal bias and we all have those. anyone pretending they don’t have positions is either delusional or lying. the best we can hope for is to be clear on what’s historical fact and what’s a political position. what i think israel should do today or my views on the united nations, for example, are my political positions and i’m very clear on what those are. what happened years ago, though, is about historical reality. it’s not enough to say “i heard this story” or “this was written in scripture”. it has to be verified through research, archaeology, etc.
let’s start there with the local tribes in the land we now call israel.
scripture tells us there were twelve tribes of israel that get called “israelites” in english. there were more than twelve and what they shared was elements of common culture and language. they didn’t all look the same or talk the same or have the same daily lives. in fact, they varied considerably town to town and region to region. they didn’t really come together but they lived in the region for thousands of years under a variety of names. the only important part was that they were the native tribes of israel in the same way indigenous groups lived elsewhere. they developed writing and agriculture and farming methods similar to the mesopotamians and egyptians near them. there’s no telling exactly when they arrived in the middle east but it was thousands of years before the story of the conflict really begins so we can think of it as “the beginning”.
where “biblical history” picks up, which most people in the west will be vaguely familiar with, is a little later. about 3600 years ago, some of those israelites conquered parts of egypt and ruled as the fifteenth dynasty for about a hundred years. they lived peacefully even after their fall from power until they were defeated by pharaoh ahmose i and turned into something like slave labor for his dynasty’s construction projects. we don’t know exactly what they called themselves at the time, though we have some ideas. we know what the egyptians called them, though. in egyptian, they were the “hyksos”, the “shepherd kings”, though this later became the “shepherd captives”. if you’ve read jewish or christian scriptures, you’ll be familiar with all the pastoral imagery, particularly about sheep farming. it’s not surprising that’s what they were famous for at the time, though it was their relatively advanced military technology and agriculture that gave them an edge over the egyptians for a while.
what happens next is religiously known as the “exodus”, the story of moses and the liberation of the jews from egypt about 3300 years ago. historically, the story is a little different but the result is much the same. the jews living as oppressed immigrant labor in egypt left and walked across the sinai and settled back where they’d come from, building their new capital at jerusalem. there was no great chase, parting of seas or wandering in the desert for decades. there was, however, a new creation story for a unified jewish nation. it was told in mythological terms because that brought people together, though nobody was expected to believe it was literally true, least of all the people who had experienced it. they’d been liberated and unified back in their homeland and things were about to get better for the no-longer-captive jews.
the next piece is the only reason this story has to go back so far. about a hundred years later, there was a group of european invaders from the mediterranean, one of the “sea peoples” from the greek islands. the best way to describe the invasion force was pirates with families looking for a new base to attack from without having to go all the way back to the greek side of the sea. they tried attacking the egyptians and various others who had fortified coastlines but where they had real success was on the coast of what is now israel, mostly because the fortifications were near the major cities closer to the jordan river rather than by the sea. they captured very little land, not even the size of a large modern city, but they held onto it for a while. they survived independently for about 250 years before the assyrians conquered them and turned them into semi-slaves. three hundred years later, the babylonians took over and wiped them out completely. there are certainly survivors in the greek islands from before the invasion but the remaining europeans in israel were slaughtered. whether that was genocide at the hands of the babylonians or simply wiping out the invading pirates is difficult to determine, though i suspect it was closer to the latter than the former. either way, that’s the last we hear about them in history.
why is this important to the story? we have absolutely no idea what the invaders called themselves but we know what the jews called them. the region they invaded was called “peleset” so they were called the “people of peleset” or “pelistim” in hebrew. when this made its way into europe, it eventually became “philistinus” in latin or “philistines” in english. they were significant in jewish history for a few hundred years so they were featured in scripture and historical writing but, once they were all killed, most people probably thought that was the last they’d heard of them, about 600bce, 2600 years ago. it was the last they’d hear of the people but not the name by a long shot.
about a half-millennium later in 62bce, the romans showed up and conquered the two main jewish kingdoms – judah and israel. the best way to think about those kingdoms from a modern perspective is something like the united kingdom with england and scotland inside (also wales and northern ireland but those aren’t relevant to the comparison here) or the united states with its northern and southern states. when the romans took over, the jews were still locally in charge but overseen by the romans as the province of judea. if you’re familiar with christian scripture, this is the time period jesus lived in. we don’t actually know anything about where jesus was historically born but the story says bethlehem followed by a childhood in nazareth, both in the roman province of judea – the source of the modern word “jew”.
the jews didn’t like living under roman rule, though, especially as the romans became more and more oppressive about jewish cultural observance. there were several attempts at rebellion but the real issue for the romans came late in the first century ce. while strong by local standards, the jewish rebels were no match for the massive armies of the roman empire and any hopes of jewish liberation were destroyed when the city of jerusalem fell to the romans in 70ce after a siege resulting in the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands, still one of the most destructive battles in history even today. while we don’t have accurate numbers, most historians estimate significantly larger numbers dead in the fall of jerusalem than the atomic bombings of hiroshima or nagasaki.
plenty of jews survived, though. some left for other parts of the roman empire, others for lands outside the empire. the rest remained in israel, many with descendants still living there today even in the same towns and cities. those who remained weren’t slaves but they didn’t have even the level of freedom they had before the rebellion. the romans decided to add insult to injury for the jews and renamed the province from judea to syria palaestina after two of the jews’ former enemies, the assyrians and the pelistim, signifying the jews were no longer in charge of their own land. still, that wasn’t the real disastrous historical defeat for the jews. that came about a half-millennium later in the seventh century (1400 years ago).
in the fourth century, the romans rebranded their local religious cults for a new audience, calling the result christianity – no relation to the christian jewish sects of the first and second centuries but they borrowed their scriptures for a veneer of authenticity. the result was a massive revival of roman imperial power and unification under a common religion. not to be outdone, a brilliant leader from arabia, disgusted by the infighting and immorality of the local warring tribes, duplicated the roman creation of christianity with his own religion modeled on judaism with christian elements and some arab culture. he called it “submission” – “islam” in arabic. it was a huge success and the arabs thrived, shifting from petty squabbles and vicious intertribal warfare to imperial conquest stretching from india through north africa and the middle east to southern europe in only a few centuries. the technical and scientific advances of the islamic age were impressive but secondary to this story. what is relevant, however, is that one of the first areas of conquest for the invading muslim armies was israel, the roman imperial province of syria palaestina, which they, over time, split into two sections. the north today has become syria and the south, israel. in a twist of linguistic fate, for most of that time, the arab invaders called the native jews “palestinians” because they came from a land that was referred to by the romans as “palestine” when they invaded it. so, for more than a thousand years, the jews were called the name of their enemies who happened to have gone extinct long before.
which arab empire was in control varied over time but the main point is that it was one conquering empire after another in control of israel. the jews were still there and still in the majority but they were semi-slaves known as dhimmis, much the same as how they lived under the romans after the fall of jerusalem and renaming of their province. that looked like it was about to change when the british defeated the turkish empire in the early twentieth century. the arabs had sided with the germans in the first world war and, as a result, were decimated by the british. israel and much of the rest of the middle east was liberated from the arab invaders and, a few years later, most of that land was called the “palestinian mandate”. what that meant was simple. the british empire promised to return the land to the jews. the jews were happy and they even promised to let the arab invaders stay as long as they remained peaceful. as we know, that wasn’t exactly how things worked out.
the british didn’t actually have any desire to give the land back to the jews and unilaterally gave about 3/4 of it away to the arabs, creating the modern country of jordan from part of what was supposed to be israel. after more than a decade of delaying on the international stage, the second world war broke out and the decolonization of israel got sidetracked by global war and the holocaust.
the arabs hadn’t learned from their mistake in the first world war and sided with germany again, mostly because germany was going to give them exactly what they wanted. a group of arabs from within the “palestinian mandate” formally collaborated with hitler’s nazis to construct concentration camps and exterminate all jews. the germans would take care of killing all the jews who had moved to europe while the arabs would kill all the jews in the middle east. as we know, if it hadn’t been for the americans joining the european war and the germans making the disastrous tactical decision to attack the soviet union before finishing the war on the western front, things would have turned out very differently and there likely would be no jews alive today under a unified european, african and middle-eastern german empire. thankfully, mistakes and american partnerships conspired to crush the nazi forces. what they didn’t do, however, was do the same for their arab partners.
only a few years after the end of the second world war, israel finally liberated itself from its conquerors and the new state of israel rose from the ashes, only a tiny fraction of its land but a good start on the decolonization project – about a year after india did the same, though with much more if its own land.
at that point, there were three groups – the jews, the arabs willing to live peacefully within israel and the arabs who had collaborated with the nazis to kill the jews who weren’t prepared to give up. the naming gets a little confusing here.
until 1948, the jews were referred to as “palestinians” and the arabs called themselves “south syrians”. once israel was liberated, this three-way split gave way to new names.
the jews were “jewish israelis”, the arabs who remained were “arab israelis” and the arabs who wanted to fight continued to call themselves “south syrians”. again, everyone thought they had seen the last of groups calling themselves “palestinians” because the original philistines had all been dead for 2500 years and the jews, who’d been misnamed for centuries, were once again called jews and israelis. that didn’t last long, though.
the “south syrian arabs” appealed to other arab nations including egypt, syria and jordan to help them complete the holocaust, killing all the jews. in return, they’d take all the jewish land. nobody was absolutely certain what would happen to that land if they won because all three nations would have fought over it but it probably would have been divided between them and the arabs living there would have joined whichever nation controlled the land they wanted to live on. it didn’t happen, though. the arab armies attacked but israel held them off and the war ended about a year later in 1949.
for the next couple of decades, the arabs continued to live there and attack from time to time but they finally managed to convince the other arab countries to give it another shot, invading israel by surprise and trying to exterminate the jews yet again to take their land. this time, though, the jews had spent a couple of decades building a thriving country with a powerful military. the arab nations were shocked, not just that they didn’t win but that they were defeated so quickly and aggressively. israel could have ended the problem right then and there by destroying the attacking arabs but international pressure intervened and forced israel to stop fighting and let itself be the target of ongoing terrorist attacks from that same group of arabs for decades to come.
with israel being an american ally, the soviet union decided to use it as a proxy for america they could target with local assistance. they supported, trained, armed and financed the same group of arabs, the ones who had partnered with hitler and the nazis only a few decades before, to create a massive terrorist army within israel. they called this army the “palestinians”. i doubt they understood the irony of the name but that’s where it came from. it wasn’t all the arabs in israel, only those who wanted to join the terrorist movement to kill the jews and arabs living there and take their land.
today, the “palestinian” terrorist organization represents about 5 million out of a bit more than 400 million arabs in the region. they mostly live in gaza, judea and samaria, where they can launch attacks against the civilians of israel. it’s important to remember that there are millions of arabs in israel who aren’t members of the terrorist group and call themselves “arab israelis” in addition to other ethnic groups in israel like the druze. the millions of free muslims who are equal citizens in israel are just as under attack as the jews living there. this isn’t a religious or ethnic conflict. it’s a battle for land and the extermination of the people who live there, most of them being the indigenous jewish inhabitants of the territory.
of course, we all have strong opinions on how this conflict should be fought and what the end result should be. those are opinions and i often share mine, as do many others. but that’s not about fact and truth and history, which is the subject at hand.
the summary is basically this. there are jews, arabs and others living in israel and have been under terrorist attack from an army calling itself the “palestinians” for decades. they are the descendants and followers of the nazi collaborators who engineered the holocaust of the second world war and have been attempting to finish that project since it ended more than seventy years ago. they now have the support of a confused west encouraging them to destroy israel and kill all its citizens, though they don’t seem to know that’s what they’re encouraging. there’s no “palestinian people” or “palestinian ethnicity”. it’s only a terrorist organization pretending to be a historical group. it’s just a tiny fraction of middle-eastern arabs who want to commit genocide under the cover of an artificial history of oppression. there are no “palestinian civilians”. even from primary-school ages, they are trained, indoctrinated and armed to fight and kill. the majority of the terror army isn’t old enough to have graduated college in the west so the western notion of “civilian” or “child” is erroneous when trying to understand the situation because there simply aren’t any.
it’s vital to keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of information floating around on social media and even western news outlets is disinformation, propaganda and professionally-created artificial productions masquerading as reality. it’s not a conspiracy in the traditional sense. it’s a terrorist organization producing propaganda and the west falling for it. it’s not a global network where all the western nations are ganging up to pretend. they truly don’t know (or care) and are listening to the loudest voices, which happen to be lying, as loud voices often do, especially when those voices are terrorists.
i’m certain you will have thoughts on what should be done about it and you’re welcome to read mine. but that’s the historical background to keep in mind when trying to formulate your thoughts.