Chapter 5: The New Big Lies – What Some Of The Most Popular Yet Deceitful Phrases Demonizing Israel Really Mean

Israel’s enemies keep demonizing Israel – and demoralizing Israel’s supporters with an arsenal of Big Lies. More and more, everyone “knows”: that Israel occupies Gaza – despite disengaging from it in 2005: that “From the River to the Sea” envisions a democratic Palestine when it envisions an exterminated Israel; and that hundreds of innocents deserved to be massacred, maimed, raped, and terrorized – because “this is what decolonization looks like.”

These lies form the foundation of the Eighth Front against Israel – the attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state in the hopes of eliminating it. They also represent the third and latest wave in a century-long attempt by too many Arabs to destroy the Jewish homeland.

• First, from 1948 to 1973, Arab armies sought to wipe out Israel in a series of conventional wars – especially in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Palestinians call their failure to destroy the Jewish state at its founding in 1948 – the Nakba – the catastrophe. This label reflects their posture as the ultimate victims, taking no responsibility for what happened, ignoring the attempts at compromise that Jews accepted, the fact that many Palestinian Arabs fled their homes voluntarily, and the bloodthirsty cries of many Arab leaders to kill the Jews.

• The second wave, which started long before 1948, unleashed barbarous terrorist attacks against Jews and non-Jews in the land of Israel, as well as Jews and non-Jews who support the Jewish state worldwide. Palestinian terrorism surged in the 1970s as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan stopped sacrificing soldiers to wipe Israel out conventionally – and culminated with the October 7 rampage. These vicious attacks, usually aimed at civilians, seek to make life unlivable in the Jewish state. That makes every new birth, every new building, every new invention, along with every class, every Jewish holiday, every celebration, every act of life in the State of Israel, a moral victory over these political criminals trying to sow fear, uncertainty, and pain.

• The third wave, which has taken on renewed intensity since October 7, demonizes Israel, Zionism, and ultimately, the Jewish people. This war of ideas is a battle of narratives. Aggressors worldwide are trying to commit what we could call “historicide” – killing Jews’ history by denying Jews’ deep ties to Israel. Instead, these haters try making the story of Zionism and Israel simply a story of conquest, of dispossessing Palestinians, while charging Israel with the Western crimes of racism, imperialism, and settler-colonialism. This wave of lies seeks to demoralize Israelis and their supporters. Fortunately, this form of information warfare offers all of us a great opportunity to mobilize, to fight back, to use whatever skills we have online and in print, with our voices, our thoughts, our protests, to stand up and push back. We don’t need to claim that Israel is perfect – we just refute these charges that it is perfectly evil.

This primer refutes some New Big Lies against Israel – sometimes repeating material mentioned earlier.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free”

If Palestine is free – meaning Jew-free – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – there is no room for more than seven million Israeli Jews. “From the River to the Sea,” proposes a one-state solution, meaning a no-Jewish state solution. Some Palestinians claim the slogan imagines a secular democratic state with Jews and Arabs living together. If peacefully-inclined protesters use the slogan, it’s their responsibility to distance themselves from the usual exterminationist vision – or find a different slogan.

“From the River to the Sea,” implies that every inch of Palestine is “occupied.” The cry ignores the fact that Israelis didn’t launch a colonial expedition, reaching some exotic locale in pith helmets and safari suits. The protesters reject the Jews’ status as indigenous people, still using their ancient language and ancient texts, rooted in their same ancestral land, culture, Bible. And the charge negates Jews’ deep history in the Promised Land.

The ADL – Anti Defamation League – and many mainstream, left-leaning, organizations consider the phrase “hate speech.” It violates the 1948 Genocide Convention. Article 3(c) prohibits “Direct and public incitement to commit genocide.” And tone counts. Protesters often shout the phrase venomously – while importing a bullying, autocratic, third-world street politics to campuses and city streets.

October 7 and the foreign rocket swarms from so far away offer clarity: if your enemy calls for your destruction – your enemy is calling for your destruction. It is bigoted not to take Islamist fundamentalists seriously, rather than condescendingly deciding they can’t really mean that. Palestine from the River to the Sea, leaves no rooms for Jews – or the Jewish state.

“Gaza is Still Occupied (After The Disengagement)”

In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza, uprooting over 8,500 Israeli citizens in 21 settlements – and four settlements in Samaria too. Generals lobbied to keep a strip of land for defensive purposes – the Philadelphi corridor. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed that if Israel retained one grain of Gazan sand, critics would claim it was still “occupied.” And the international community promised that once Gaza was no longer occupied, Israel could live in peace as the Gazans prospered.

That word “occupation” is the keystone lie in the fight against Israel’s legitimacy. Some critics of Israel’s actions, but not its very being, use the word to describe the disputed territories since 1967. By contrast, Hamas and many other Palestinian rejectionists look at every inch of Israeli land as occupied. In its updated, supposedly more pragmatic, 2017 charter, Hamas declared “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever had befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, judaisation [sic], or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate… Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

So beware: When some people say “end the occupation,” they mean, “return some or all territories filled with Palestinians, taken in 1967.” When Hamas says “end the occupation” they mean “end Israel.” To some, “occupation” approaches the problem as a border dispute, open to compromise. To Hamas and its rabid supporters, “occupation” treats Israel as the problem and deserving of the death penalty.

This sweeping “occupation” claim overlooks Gaza’s complicated history with Egypt, which “occupied” Gaza in its legal limbo from 1949 until Israel seized the territory in its 1967 war of self-defense. The word “occupation,” evoking the Nazi occupation of Europe, delegitimizes Israel while legitimizing the Palestinians’ all-or-nothing “Nakba Narrative,” claiming that European Jews with no ties to the land displaced the aboriginal people – as Israel’s original sin. To many Palestinians, Israel is “occupied” – all of Israel, from the River to the Sea. All Israelis are “settlers.” The Negev’s plundered kibbutzim and invaded cities are “settlements,” despite lying in pre-1967 Israel, within the “Green Line,” the borders from the 1949 armistice with Jordan (which takes its name from a map on which the demarcation line was hastily drawn in green pencil). This sweeping big lie justifies Hamas’s savagery, deeming every Israeli, every Thai volunteer, every tourist, an “occupier” and thus deserving of any violence that befalls them.

Meanwhile, that word “disengagement” explains many Israelis’ frustration with diplomacy-by-slogan. Eighteen years ago, Gaza housed some weapons, few tunnels, and a limited terrorist infrastructure, because Israel retained military control. Yet, almost immediately after disengagement, primitive Kassam rockets continued bombarding Israel as they had before – while critics bombarded Israel with the occupation charge. The violence against Israel – and the criticism – intensified when Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in 2007.

Facing an implacable foe vowing to exterminate the Jews – see the Hamas Charter – Israel blockaded a Hamas-controlled Gaza. That launched a chain-reaction of lies: that Israel “occupies” the territory it left – where Hamas built its deadly arsenal mostly unimpeded despite the “blockade”; that Gaza is the “most densely populated place on earth” – even though it doesn’t compare to Manhattan, and other super-skyscrapered city centers; and that the Zionists made Gaza an “open air prison” or concentration camp – when Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border, and keeps Gazans away from Egyptians.

Words matter. So do facts. Israel kept its promise when it disengaged. Israel betrayed many of its own citizens, who objected strenuously. Nevertheless, Israel ended up with no peace, no peace of mind, and a neighboring piece of territory that became Hamasistan. Today, Israel faces a hostile, seething, lethal multi-leveled, launching pad for thousands of rockets and marauders, exporting misery – run by fanatics who treat fellow Palestinians as cannon fodder.

“Israel is an Apartheid State”

The Jews seem to have magical magnetic powers. Over the centuries, Jews attracted various labels: Jews were too rich and too poor, too capitalist and too socialist, too traditional and too modern, too anxious to fit in and too happy to stand out.

Today’s haters target the Jewish state in addition to the Jews. As countries stand accused of different crimes, Israel keeps being found guilty of the trendiest and most heinous national sins – especially if Westerners committed them. Today, Israel is a Jewish-supremacist state with privilege, a settler-colonialist enterprise. In the 1990s, Israel was racist, colonialist, and imperialist – then guilty of “ethnic cleansing” once the Balkans mess introduced that phrase into the international vocabulary. But since the 1970s, as the international community justifiably denounced Apartheid South Africa, Israel has been called an Apartheid state.

Apartheid created a system of racial differentiation – apartness – based on biological classifications perversely assuming that whites, blacks, and racially mixed people were not equal. The Apartheid Wall in Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum lists 148 laws sifting people into different racial categories calibrating who deserved which privileges – and which restrictions. Israel never passed one law defining people by race.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is national not racial. Israel, like every other country, does make distinctions based on various identifying factors, including religion, national origin, and citizenship. But that’s not what racism means. Moreover, if Israel is racist, and wants Apartheid, it’s doing an awful job. Israeli-Arabs enjoy equal rights – and have served as Supreme Court judges, Knesset members, key members of the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid coalition from 2021 to 2022. With 20 percent of the population, Israeli-Arabs constitute about 20 percent of the doctors, and 40 percent of the nurses, and pharmacists. Finally, if Israelis are anti-Arab, why were so many excited about the Abraham Accords, and why are Hamas and Iran threatened by Saudi Arabia’s potential rapprochement with Israel? Maybe Israelis don’t hate Arabs – but only fight enemies who seek to destroy them. The Apartheid slur soared in popularity after 1994. Israel, seeking a two-state solution under the Oslo Peace Process, withdrew from the most populated Palestinian cities, while approving the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. While not perfect, Israel initiated many attempts at compromise and peace. Palestinians rarely reciprocated, but Israel’s initiatives have repeatedly been used against it militarily, diplomatically, and reputationally.

In 2001, the Durban World Conference against Racism in South Africa turned into an anti-Zionist hatefest. Four years later, spreading the poison, Palestinian activists launched Israeli Apartheid Week on various campuses. Why pivot your calendar around knocking others down rather than building yourselves up, many wondered. All that poison, such hostility to compromise, undergirds the October 7 savagery. As the Hamas charter proclaims, “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement….”

“Zionism is Settler-Colonialism”

The Oxford Dictionary defines colonialism as “the act of taking control of an area or a country that is not your own, especially using force, and sending people from your own country to live there.” Textbooks mention the British colonization of “North America, parts of Africa, and India” to illustrate “colonial domination.” You can dislike how Israelis treat Palestinians. You can denounce the settlements. But calling Israel a “colonialist” or “settler-colonialist” power is like calling chocolate – vanilla.

“De-colonization” has become today’s cause celebre. And Israel-bashing is trending. Naturally, fanatics caricature Israel as a “settler-colonial state.” But it mocks the facts.

Jews put the “in” in “indigenous.” Negating Jews’ historical ties to Israel cancels the Bible and Jesus’s story, dismissing the land of Israel’s centrality to Judaism for 3,500 years.

Nevertheless, many progressives use a “de-colonization” prism caricaturing Zionists as settler-colonialists, forever-oppressing, and Palestinians as the colonized, forever-blameless. This prejudice fuses the Marxist “oppressed-oppressor” binary with the psychiatrist Franz Fanon’s argument that de-colonization is a state of mind, often requiring a cleansing violence.

Rejecting the expansive, ever-growing-pie of Thomas Jefferson’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, people pushing the de-colonization ideology frame the world – and America – as caught in a zero-sum power struggle. The oppressive colonizers in this Manichean, black and white world, are always guilty – and the oppressed, forever pure, innocent, trampled.

Those doctrines made the October 7 bloodbath “exhilarating,” justified, or in the perverse words of Prof. Judith Butler, an act of “armed resistance.” The rhetoric suggests the settler-colonialists got what they deserved, as the decolonizers finally rose up. Seeing the world that way requires much fanaticism, many simplifications, and multiple distortions. But those blinders explain the feminists who failed to see the rape culture and child abuse, the liberals who failed to acknowledge the despotism, the humanists who failed to protest, the peace-loving students calling to destroy Tel Aviv, and threatening their dorm-mates and classmates, as Palestinian marauders crossed civilizational red lines.

“ISRAEL IS GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES IN GAZA”

The situation looks bleak. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders. Reporters sling charges of “war crimes,” “genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing.” Can all these organizations with impressive-sounding names, The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, Human Rights Watch, be wrong?

Yes.

Since the UN General Assembly called Zionism “racism” in 1975, international organizations single out Israel. These Bash Israel Firsters damn Israel regardless of what it does – echoing Hamas’ simplistic lies without acknowledging Israel’s complex truths. Attacked mercilessly, Israel fought back – and was found guilty of defending itself. When Israel killed civilians in areas where Hamas fought or was hiding, Israel was guilty of “genocide.” When it moved civilians into safe areas, Israel was guilty of “ethnic cleansing.”

Similarly, Hamas kidnapped 253 Israelis and held over 100 hostage for over a year. Yet much of the international community – and many Israelis – blamed the Netanyahu government far more than Hamas and its supporters Turkey and Qatar. Yet, again and again, insiders participating in the negotiations, from Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, confirmed that Hamas sabotaged most attempts to free the hostages. Blinken told the Atlantic Council: Hamas “played the spoiler” repeatedly.

Technically, the ICC arrest warrants violated the principle of complementarity. Democracies have their own mechanisms for investigating possible war crimes. Israel has the rule of law, an activist judiciary and an army with a strong code of ethics, strict military discipline, and functional investigative procedures. Israel is the first democracy to have its internal methods so disrespected by the ICC – furthering the impression that Israel is held to double standards no other democracy faces.

More broadly, charging Israel with “inhumane acts” from “starvation” to “murder,” transforms October 7’s victim into the victimizer. Ignoring the truism of the Civil War general William T. Sherman that “war is hell,” the accusations would have put America, Great Britain, France and other countries in the dock for how their soldiers fought in World War II, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The accusations also ignore all the humanitarian aid Israel gave to Gazans, the role Hamas played in stealing much of the aid, and the many humanitarian pauses Israel implemented, which only helped Hamas hold on to power.

The wideranging indictments set a dangerous precedent for any democracy mobilizing to protect itself against an enemy. The expectations that Israel not besiege a territory where its civilians are held hostage and tortured is unprecedented. The condemnations of Israel for killing civilians cynically used as human shields is unprecedented. And the Orwellian claim that Israel starved Gazans when it brought in so much food is unprecedented. Then again, there has long been an Israel exception and obsession.

International law is clear: As the International Humanitarian Law Database of the International Committee of the Red Cross notes: “Many military manuals state that the presence of civilians within or near military objectives does not render such objectives immune from attack.” It’s ironic. This constant demonization of Israel, along with the constant pressure on Israel to stop its operations, helped prolong the war and the agony of the Palestinians the international community was purporting to protect.

“Israel is committing Genocide”

Genocide, tribe-killing, means a systematic series of violent acts “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Yet the Palestinian population has quintupled since 1967, from one million to nearly five-and-a half million people. Zionists appear to be as bad at genocide as they are at Apartheid.

Hatred often involves projection – assuming your enemies would do to you what you would do to them. These false cries that Israelis are targeting Palestinians for genocide – reflect the sweeping, categorical, and thus genocidal tendencies, in the Hamas Charter, in the October 7 sadism, and in too much pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

“Disproportionate Bombing”

Asymmetrical warfare is difficult. When terrorists attack your civilians, then hide behind their own civilians, what can a democratic army do? Inevitably, some of those civilian shields will die. Moreover, when you have an air force, and must choose between bombing an enemy from the air and sending your troops in door-to-door, risking ambush, what’s the moral call? A leader’s primary moral responsibility is to the led – and a defender’s primary moral responsibility is to defend those unfairly, viciously attacked.

Similarly, international law prohibits “attacks that are not directed at a specific military objective.” When an aggressor hides in mosques and hospitals and kindergartens and schools, those normally untouchable civilian spaces become legitimate military targets: emphasizing the violation of civilizational norms, call them “Ha-Mosques,” “Hamospitals” and “killergartens.” Complaining about a “disproportionate response” from a regular army when fighting terrorists embedded in a city, is essentially rejecting any military response. Yet when your enemy calls for your annihilation, tries acting on it, then vows to try again and again, it’s unrealistic to expect no collateral damage.

The moral onus for every death, injury, and misfire, falls on Hamas for initiating this round. War involves a clash of powerful, ugly forces. To win, it’s logical – and moral – for your side to mobilize as much force as possible – within the bounds of reason, but not being forever constrained, and immediately criticized, as Israel often is.

Humanitarian Ceasefire

For eighteen years, the world yelled “disproportionate bombing” and called for “humanitarian ceasefires” whenever Israel defended itself against rockets from Gaza. For eighteen years, Hamas stole much humanitarian aid sent to Gaza. After Hamas invaded, shattering so many lives, from an Israeli perspective, what would be “humanitarian” about a premature ceasefire? It’s like calling yourself “pro-peace” while tolerating a terrorist-dictatorship in Gaza that oppresses Gazans and threatens Israelis.

Most calls for “ceasefire” only targeted Israel. World leaders rarely demanded a “ceasefire” from the Houthis and from Hamas – with a release of every hostage. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear to the New York Times in his final interview: Hamas was the biggest obstacle to a hostage deal – and he asked “Where was the world” – noting the international community’s failure to pressure Hamas while forever-pressuring Israel.

Israel’s primary obligation is to defend its citizens, and free its hostages, restoring a certain balance of fear that deters its genocidal neighbors, while rearranging the borders so a buffer zone, with no human intrusion, distances Gazans from their Israeli neighbors.

Nevertheless, for what some military experts call the first time, Israel created humanitarian corridors and distributed over 500,000 tons of “humanitarian aid,” including fuel which helped keep Hamas’s attack tunnels running. On October 7, Hamas terrorists kidnapped Omar Wenkert a 22-year-old suffering from colitis. His father wonders: “Why do the terrorists get aid from my country when these kidnappers won’t give my son the lifesaving medication he needs?” The dilemmas are agonizing.

Israel kept trying to ease the burden on innocents stuck between Hamas and the IDF – while refuting the lie that Hamas is a small, marginal group in Gaza. Most Gazans, along with as many as 72 percent of Palestinians, celebrated the carnage, and many joined in. Still, Israel kept experimenting with ways to help, to minimize civilian suffering. External military experts acknowledged that Israel’s decision prolonged its campaign, sometimes limited its military successes, and cost Israeli lives. Unfortunately, the phrase “humanitarian aid” too often means resupplying Hamas, while “ceasefire” sounds like only pressuring Israel and letting the killers regroup.

Palestinian propagandists have developed a language that distorts words, negates history, and obscures Palestinian intentions.

October 7 was a nightmarish wake-up call. Israel must be moral – for its own sake, for its soldiers’ consciences, and its national soul. But the delusion of tolerating Palestinian lies and international gullibility ended when those terrorists swarmed Israel’s peaceful kibbutzim and villages, sowing death and destruction – and Hezbollah’s rockets started landing too. The challenge now is creating a new reality – and a new lexicon to acknowledge that reality, then build a better, fairer, and safer new Middle East for all.

Even the January, 2025 ceasefire reflected the skewed moral compass and conversation. First, Israel, and in particular its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, absorbed the bulk of the protests for foot-dragging in negotiations, when Hamas was most responsible.

Second, in the exchange, innocents kidnapped from their homes or from a concert, then abused psychologically, physically, and frequently sexually for months, were equated with murderous terrorists convicted in a democratic country’s court of law.

Third, the cease-fire deal allowed Hamas to release hostages – or hostages’ bodies – a few at a time, further dehumanizing the hostages and prolonging their agony.

Nevertheless, most Israelis supported the deal, because they valued human life above all and rejoiced at each hostage release.

And, as painful as the prolonged war was, as President Joe Biden retired, he acknowledged “Israel did plenty of damage to Iran and it proxies.” By stubbornly fighting month after month – and sometimes defying American advice – Israel, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu and a revived IDF command, dismantled most of Hamas’s battalions, eliminated many of its leaders, crushed Hezbollah, and weakened Iran. When all that pressure helped lead to the Assad regime’s collapse in Syria, Israel bombed most of Syria’s chemical plants and military infrastructure. Israel in 2023 and 2024 proved the paradox that, sometimes, going to war is the most effective path for pursuing peace.