Why there is no ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ — and what is it, actually?

We often hear the phrase, ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ everywhere – in the media, from Israeli officials, written in articles, repeated by foreign policy think tanks, and U.S. politicians. It is ubiquitous. 

They are all incorrect. A ‘conflict’ indicates two equal sides laying credible claim over a disputed issue. Thus, the false phrase equates Jews with terrorists and terrorist supporters. And, the incorrect saying plays into revisionist history in an antisemitic fashion.

Terrorists and their supporters claim that Israel ‘stole’ ‘Palestine.’ 

But ‘Palestine’ was nothing more than a colonizer’s term for Judea from 136 A.D. – to when Jews liberated Israel in 1948 from British occupiers. And, yes, Jews living in Israel during the aforementioned time period were known as ‘Palestinians.’ 

Antisemites believe that Gaza is also ‘Palestine.’ False. Gaza legally under U.N. Article 80, still belongs to Israel, and has been Jewish land historically since 145 B.C. Gaza has been occupied by Arab settlers since 1948, mostly from Egypt. 

Similarly, Judea and Samaria, in the ancestral heartland of Israel, are often mislabeled as ‘Palestine’ pertaining to some false ‘homeland’ of Arab ‘Palestinians’ — when no such ethnicity or singular group exists. 

Gazans are mainly from Egypt, but some are from Saudi Arabia, and some are Israeli Arabs who fled voluntarily when Arab armies invaded in 1948. The Israeli-Arabs hail from 25 different Muslim countries. The Arab settlers in Judea and Samaria are mostly Jordanian occupiers; about 30% to 40% of ‘Arabs’ in Judea and Samaria are genetically Jews who were converted to Islam in the 11th century and who live as Arabs. 

It was not until 1967 when the KGB launched an antisemitic campaign against Israel called ‘Operation SIG’ that a false ‘national liberation’ movement was created, lumping together the various Arab groups that have no common origination points. 

If it is not a ‘conflict,’ what is it exactly? It is a war against Jews and has been for well over a century. 

While there were periods in Israel’s history where Jews and Muslims fought off occupiers (Battle of Haifa in 1100 A.D. against the Crusaders; and both Muslims and Jews joined forces to fight against the Byzantines), overall, it has been violence from Arabs against Jews with official terrorism statistics dating back to 1860.

In the early 1900s, recent Jewish immigrants to Israel established Hashomer, or, Guild of the Watchman, as a self-defense guardian group to defend the Jewish villages in the Galilee, Judea and Samaria. 

Small in numbers, but they helped with defense until the Haganah was established in 1920. 

Historian Benny Morris explained, “Anti-Jewish violence became endemic, with Jewish settlement guards – who were seen as symbols of the Zionist enterprise – regularly dying at the hands of Arab ambushers between 1911 and 1913. In April 1914, the British consul in Jerusalem reported, ‘The assaults upon Jews in the outlying districts are increasingly frequent.’”

Speaking of the British, it was those occupiers who fomented deadly Arab revolts against Jews in Jaffa (1921), Hebron (1929), Gaza (1936), Jerusalem (1936-1939), and numerous smaller acts of violence against Jews throughout the Jewish homeland. The British outlawed arms for Jews, but allowed Arabs to have weapons. And, instead of protecting the Jews in these post-pogroms, the British occupiers expelled Jews from deeply historically Jewish areas such as Hebron and Gaza. 

Aside from the Arab violence against Jews in Israel, let’s not forget the long list of pogroms against Jews in Muslim lands which spanned centuries. From the Fez Massacre in 1033 to the 1941 Farhud in Iraq; the pogroms in Cairo, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Iran, to name but a few, were significant. 

While everyone is familiar with the pogroms of Europe, Muslim violence against Jews is often ignored outside of Mizrahi Jewish communities, and is only mentioned as a false justification in response to the ‘Zionism occupation’ of a Jewish Zionist homeland. 

Meanwhile, the Deir Yassin ‘massacre’ has long been debunked as such even by Arab testimonials and corroborated as not a massacre by military records held currently in the terrorist Palestinian Authority-run city of Ramallah, Israel. Only combatants were killed during the battle of Deir Yassin. 

 It is time to be historically honest and not aid in antisemitic falsehoods by equating Jews to terrorists. The war against Jews has been waging far too long; this current war in response to the genocide on October 7, and Israel’s subsequent policies have to be so strong that it ends all terrorism against Jews in their own homeland.

Laureen Lipsky is the CEO & Founder of Taking Back the Narrative (www.tbtnisrael.com), a Zionism education company. 

Image: Pexels // Pexels License