Attempting to understand the source of all this hatred

I came across an Instagram post this week that helped me understand where all this hatred of Israel is coming from.

It was a post by a female cartoonist in Montreal who wanted to share how she talks about Palestine with her kids. She starts off with a sketch of a woman telling her child about how “a group of people called the Jewish people” were hurt by Germans and other Europeans and many were killed and showing a drawing of the train tracks leading to Auschwitz. “It was a genocide,” the mom tells her child. Then, she writes, that other countries forced Germany to stop killing Jews.

After that, some of the Jewish people wanted their own country, but others didn’t, they just wanted to feel happy and safe wherever they went. So some Jewish people went to a new place to make their own country, which they called Israel, but other people were living there, she writes. “The people on that land are called Palestinians.” But the European countries decided to let Jews have Israel anyway, even though there were people already living there because at that time Europe could make those decisions, the mom explains to her child in the drawing.

So for Israel to be created, the “Israelis began killing Palestinians and moving them into smaller and smaller spaces. Israelis made a lot leave the land forever and they never let them come back.”

Not only did they move Palestinians away, “Israel also controlled them,” this artist wrote in her explanation to her kids. “They still do. They control what they can eat, how much food they can grow, how much water they have and how they move around. For example, they stop Palestinians at checkpoints even when they need to get to the hospital to have a baby.”

“How would it feel to be so controlled?” the author offers as a discussion point at the bottom of the drawing.

Then when some Palestinians fight back, “Israel says they are terrorists. This means they can put them in prison for a very long time. Even kids are in prison.” (Followed by discussion questions from the author: “What is a terrorist? Who decides? How would it feel to be in prison?”)

The next slide shows a mom pointing out a drawing of Gaza to her child. “A lot of Palestinians are made to live in a place called Gaza. Others live in the West Bank. Israel won’t let them move back and forth or even visit their cousins if they live in the other territory.”

Now on to how she explains to her children about what’s currently happening in Gaza.

“Right now, Israel is planning to take Gaza and make it part of Israel. In order to do that, Israel is killing Palestinians by bombing and shooting them. They are also stopping food and medicine from going into Gaza. A great many Palestinians are dying. It’s a genocide.”

In the last slide, she asks “What can we do to help stop this?” The answers are “Make lots of noise to show we want Palestinians to live and be free!” “Demonstrate!” “Stop our countries from selling weapons and giving money to Israel!”

I couldn’t fall asleep after reading this. Sadly, this is a post by a woman who describes herself as a social worker, teacher, cartoonist and Jewish mother.

If this is her perception of Israel and Zionism, it’s no surprise why she has so many other anti-Zionism drawings on her Instagram account (which as of right now has more than 20,000 followers). There are currently more than 57,000 likes on this post. When I saw her post earlier tonight, there was a mix of comments - some thanking her for telling the story so clearly (?!!!?) and others accusing her of having incorrect information, but now all the comments have been deleted and commenting is turned off.

Where does this narrative come from? How did a Jewish mom in Montreal start believing this narrative and how many of today’s Jewish moms are passing this version of history down to their children?

I don’t know what this woman’s story is or what her background is, but there are so many things obviously wrong with her narrative and the idea that this is how some people (Jewish people!) view the history of the Jewish homeland, is so upsetting. (I know, after everything that has happened in the world since Oct. 7, I shouldn’t be so shocked, but I still am.)

Here are some points she omitted:

• Palestine was the name of the region before 1948 and there were Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Arabs (both Muslim and Christian), Palestinian Druze, and others, who lived in Palestine. Yes, there were “Palestinians” who lived in Palestine before Israel became a state, but the term Palestinian referred to people who lived in this geographic area, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. The idea of a Palestinian nationalism that people think of today with the Pro-Palestine movement, didn’t formally develop until the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. (In other words, some Palestinians may have the generational connection to the land but Arabs were not the only ones who were identified as Palestinians before 1948.)
  

• The concept of Israel is central to Judaism, with Israel being considered the Jewish homeland where Jews have continually lived throughout the existence of Judaism, even though Jews were exiled multiple times like they were from other countries throughout history, which is why the existence of a Jewish homeland is so important to the Jewish people. (And contrary to what some people are saying online, even though Israel may be considered the Jewish homeland, there are also Israeli Muslims and Israeli Christians and Israeli Druze, and they all have the same citizenship rights and are able to freely practice their own religion there. So that means there’s no apartheid within Israel. And those who are against there being a country with a Jewish majority, are you also against there being 57 Muslim-majority countries?)
  

• Israel completely left Gaza in 2005, leaving the Palestinians an opportunity for self-governance. All the Jewish people living in Gaza were forced out by Israel in hopes that would bring peace to the region. People used to be able to go back and forth from Gaza to the West Bank until the intifada started and Palestinians decided to blow themselves up in buses and public areas in order to try to kill as many Israelis as possible - actions that are celebrated in Islamic Jihadi circles.
  

• Nearly all the Jewish holidays celebrated by Jewish people across the world have a connection to Israel. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem literally stands on the same site where the Jewish Temples once stood. So she ignores all the archaeological evidence and history that ties the Jewish people to the land of Israel. I wonder how she explains any of the Jewish holidays to her kids.

I know the artist was trying to explain the history to a child so she was trying to keep the story simple, but omitting the Jewish connection to Israel seems like a pretty big part to omit. And of course she also leaves out all the Palestinian Arab attacks on the Palestinian Jews during those early years in the region and all the terror attacks since and there’s no mention of the Oct. 7 massacre or the hostages.

How about adding additional discussion points asking “What would you do if your neighbors broke into your house and killed your family and your pet dog and kidnapped your brother? How would you feel if your neighbors kept shooting rockets at your house over and over again and you had 15 seconds to run into a bomb shelter for safety? What would you do if your brother was being held underground starving in a tunnel under Gaza for 685 days after being kidnapped by your neighbor who keeps shooting rockets toward your house?”

As things escalate further in Gaza this week, anti-Israel sentiment is going to get worse, which is why people sharing lies and misinformation is so distressing.

• Publications sharing photos of emaciated children and claiming Israel is starving them, then afterwards running a correction that the child actually had a serious genetic disorder or illness. (“They became symbols for Gazan starvation. But all 12 suffer from other health problems.”)
  

• Aid organizations claiming that Israel is causing famine in Gaza though Israel has sent almost 2 million tons of food into Gaza since the start of the war. Meanwhile, Israel recently invited international journalists to the Kerem Shalom crossing inside Gaza to see the tons of aid that has entered Gaza with Israel’s approval that is waiting for the UN to distribute. According to Israel, the UN is refusing to distribute it. (Likely because there are reports of armed gunmen attacking the drivers and looting the trucks.) People are also claiming that workers at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a partnership between Israel and the U.S. are shooting Gazans who come to get aid, which is a very different view from this reporter who actually visited a GHF distribution site.

So apparently there’s plenty of food in Gaza, but it’s rotting just inside the border so the people aren’t able to access it. So people aren’t wrong to be horrified about there being hunger in Gaza, but their anger is directed at the wrong people. And somehow some of those advocating for the Palestinians in Gaza seem to think that setting synagogues on fire and vandalizing the cars and homes of Jewish people and attacking Jewish people in different parts of the world are noble actions helping the Palestinian cause.

Regarding the artist’s point about genocide: The world’s Jewish population in 1936 was 16.6 million and in 1948, it was approximately 11.4 million. According to The Jewish Agency for Israel, as of September 2023, there were approximately 15.7 million Jews globally. Based on a 1967 census by Israel after the Six-Day War, the population of Gaza was about 394,000 (Some estimate that it was as high as 450,000). Today’s population in Gaza is 2.1 million (the same as in 2022, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics). (And 5.9 million Palestinian refugees are registered today with UNRWA, which receives humanitarian aid from many countries around the world to provide services to those Palestinian refugees - in 2024, UNRWA received $1.4 billion in pledges.)

There’s no denying that there’s hunger in Gaza, but the accusations that Israel is intentionally starving the Gaza people are not true. It’s horrifying that people believe that - and that they believe anyone who support Israel’s existence would be OK with that.