I have been called “antisemitic” many times. I found out a long time ago that if you are ever critical of anything that happens in Israel, you are instantly labeled as antisemitic.
I don’t think I am. My Christ is a Jew. Daily, I read the Bible, which was written by Jewish people. The foundation stones of my faith are Jewish. But none of that seems to make a difference when I say, “What Israel is doing to the Palestinian people is just a slower form of the Holocaust.” Automatically, Bil became a hater of Jews.
For clarification, I also need to share I’m not a huge fan of some Palestinians. I thought that Yasser Arafat was a thug who stole the Americans blind and ripped off his own people. I see Palestinian leadership today as weak. I’ve even had some run-ins with Palestinians when I went to Israel in 2019, and a few of them accused me of being a “Jew lover.”
But none of that negates what I saw, so I was not surprised when Hamas attacked and slaughtered a large number of Israelis on October 7, 2023. One can cage people for only so long before something awful happens. The Palestinians have been caged for over seventy years.
In 2019, we stayed in the Palestinian area of Jerusalem, which was a ten-minute walk to the ancient city. The hotel had been owned by Palestinians for over seventy-five years but was falling apart because the Israeli government would not give them any permits to make improvements. Our guide had never heard of the Israeli government giving a Palestinian a permit to make improvements to his or her property. The Israelis are probably waiting for the hotel to fall apart, and then they can take over and build a new Israeli hotel there.
Our guide took us to the rooftop of a building with a commanding view of the Jerusalem area and pointed out how one could easily tell the difference between a home of a Palestinian and the house of a Jew. If the house had a water tank and generator on the roof, it was the home of a Palestinian because the Israelis would arbitrarily cut off the electricity and water supply, forcing the Palestinians to have their own source of water and electricity.
In Israel, there are over 250 illegal Jewish settlements on seized Palestinian land housing almost 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers, who now dump their trash on Palestinian land.
The average income of an Israeli is over $49,000 a year. For a Palestinian it’s around $5,500. Unemployment for Israelis is about 3.5 percent; for Palestinians it’s around 26 percent. There are over 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including children, teens, and women, many without any charges.
There are sixty-eight Palestinian refugee camps in Israel, some of which have been there for over seventy years. These ghettos are hotbeds for recruiting terrorists.
I could go on and on with facts but my point is this: Israel can get rid of Hamas but a new terrorist group is going to move in. Palestinians feel hopeless and helpless about a future in Israel for themselves, so a few of them are willing to kill mostly innocent Jewish folks because they see no alternatives.
Until Israel faces the elephant in the room (Palestinian genocide) this terrorism will continue. I suspect that statement alone is enough for most Jewish folks to label me antisemitic again. That’s fine with me because all I am doing is telling the truth that almost all Jewish folks don’t want to hear. It seems their only defense is to call me names.
Peace Love Joy Hope
Bil
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
Hi Bill,
I am in complete agreement with what you have written. I was supposed to go to Palestine on Oct 12th with a group of largely United Church of Canada Ministers (I am not a Minister) to understand better the situation and advocate for the Palestinians when we got home, if we felt so inclined after our visit. We never got to go, but in preparation for the trip, and after Oct 7th, I have learned so much that I was totally ignorant of before. And yes, it is so easy to be labelled as ‘anti-semetic’, something that has snuck into our culture. Someone on the Israeli side has done a good job with that.
Very powerful read, and I completely agree. Why can’t we be pro-Palestine and pro-Israel? Of course, the horrible truth makes it a little harder to be pro- Israeli. Miss you
Very powerful read, and I completely agree. Why can’t we be pro-Palestine and pro-Israel? Of course, the horrible truth makes it a little harder to be pro- Israeli. Miss you
Well put Bil. I spent six weeks in Bethlehem in 1955 just outside an refugee camp, and learned a lot then and have kept learning from history. The state of Israel was created by Zionists with the help of England and the US through the UN, as a colonial settler project, that unfolded similarly to that of the US when it ethnically terrorized, stole land, forced long marches to reservations, and committed genocide against American Indigenous people. They resisted and our government even offered bounties for their scalps. How long is it going to take us to see our Indigenous citizens as equals? That is the only requirement for us and Israel that will result in peace with the Palestinians. This criticism does not make me an anti-semite. It is the only way to support Israel.