Believe it or not: Fact, fiction, and the propaganda war against Israel

“Believe it or not” is a phrase that has maneuvered its way into our English vernacular like few others. At some time or another most everyone in the English speaking world has used it to mean—“This may sound totally unbelievable, but it is demonstrably true.” It introduces something that is hard to believe, perhaps seemingly improbable, even surprising…but true none the less.

The phrase was made famous and became a cultural phenomenon when used by an American cartoonist named Robert Ripley. In 1929 Ripley named his new cartoon, appearing in papers all over America, “Believe It or Not.” He would present wild and extraordinary claims about people, places, historical events, physical feats and the like. They were all true but hard to believe. Today in cities across the world you can find Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museums with displays of the world’s tallest man, animal oddities like two headed cows, shrunken heads, and all sorts of authentic, yet hard to believe exhibits.

Ripley is saying, “I know this sounds unbelievable, but—believe it or not—it is true.” Well, believe it or not, there is a well funded, highly organized propaganda war raging against Israel that is laced with blatant lies. Repeated often enough and coupled with the help of media misinformation it is being accepted as fact by an uninformed listening audience. “Believe it or not” much of the news we are hearing about Israel today is in effect….fake news…wrapped in a cloak of half truths at best.

This war of false propaganda operates with five basic talking points—Israel is a war monger. Israel stole Palestinian land while expelling and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their own land. Israel refuses to grant the Palestinians a state of their own. Israel is an apartheid state. And, Israel is guilty of genocide. But, there is what Paul Harvey used to call, “the rest of the story,” entailing what these talking points are not telling us.

The first of these accusations is that Israel is a war monger. This charge has been hurled at the Jewish State since the first day of its modern existence in 1948. But…believe it or not…it is not true. It is fake news. The actual historical facts tell a quite different story. While it is unquestionably true that Israel has been involved in numerous wars over the past decades, the reality is they never started a single one of them.

On May 14, 1948 they declared their independence with the recognition of the United Nations. The plain truth is the United Nations offered the same thing at the same time to the Palestinians. They could have had there own state with international recognition, their independence with real borders of their own. But, instead of declaring their own statehood as Israel did, they chose war and a lifetime of terrorism instead. It is hard to imagine what might have been their’s today if they had made different choices.

The very next day after declaring Israeli statehood, five Arab armies invaded the one day old country from Egypt in the south, from Jordan in the east, and from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the north. The Arab goal was to eliminate the Jewish State and drive all the Jews “into the sea.” With little weaponry, a newly formed army that emerged from the underground, and platoons of Holocaust survivors only three years removed from Nazi death camps…believe it or not…they miraculously won their War of Independence because they had no where else to go and no alternative to victory.

History records the story of Arab nations beginning wars with Israel repeatedly over the decades from the War of Independence to the Six Day War to the Yom Kippur War and all the way to the Iran War and the Gaza War of more recent times. Do not forget the Gaza War began when terrorists from Gaza penetrated Israel on October 7, 2023 brutally massacring 1,200 Israelis and taking 251 Israelis as hostages. Young girls by the scores were savagely gang raped and their bodies mutilated before having their throats slit. Babies and toddlers were placed in kitchen ovens and burned alive in front of their parents so that the horrible sight of their burned, charred bodies would be the last thing their mothers and fathers saw before they were shot in the head execution style. The elderly were burned alive in their homes. And the list of inhumane, demonic atrocities go on and on. Believe it or not…Israel never started a single war and is anything but a war mongering state.

“Israel stole Palestinian land expelling and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their own land” is another of the talking points in the propaganda war against the Jews. But…believe it or not…it is not true. The facts are that the United Nations divided the land into two states, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. Even though the Jews were only allowed a gerrymandered fragment of the land, at some places less than ten miles wide that did not even include the entirety of Jerusalem, they readily agreed. Palestinians responded with an emphatic, “No.” The very next day they attacked the new tiny Jewish state on all fronts. The reality is that the U.N. did not “give” the Jews a country, they simply recognized a people with over 3,000 years of roots in that very piece of land who had been promised a modern home since the Balfour Agreement of 1917.

The aftermath of the War of Independence which the new Jewish State miraculously won had a series of catastrophic consequences. The truth is over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs did, in fact, lose their homes. Both sides of the conflict should own their part in this tragic event. The reality is that many of them were expelled by Israeli forces and documented horrors, like that of Deir Yassin, can not be legitimately denied. However, the majority of those who lost their homes did so because they fled the fighting from both sides. Told by Arab leaders they should leave the immediate danger of their homes, that the Jews would be quickly defeated, and then they could then return. History records this never happened. The Arab armies were soundly defeated on the battlefield leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to live as refugees in camps spread out along the Jordanian border, in the West Bank, and in Gaza.

Palestinians keep this as a special day of mourning on their calendars as they remember what they call “The Nakba,” the catastrophe that ultimately left almost three quarters of a million of them in refugee camps. When it comes to the Jews—Believe it or Not—a double standard is applied. The world is virtually silent about their own “Nakba.” Over 850,000 Jews were expelled and driven out of the surrounding Arab countries where they had been a part of the fabric of the country and culture for centuries. They, too, left everything behind as they were forced out of their Jewish communities in Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and several other countries. Israel readily absorbed them all into their small sliver of land they called Eretz Israel. Sadly, none of the Arab nations with vast land masses welcomed into their countries their Palestinian cousins, shutting them out and leaving them to live as refugees to this very day. As recently as the conflict in Gaza, Egypt built huge walls along their border with Gaza to make sure none of the Palestinian inhabitants of that war torn region could flee into Egypt for safety.

The accusation that Israel stole Palestinian land is hard to justify when history records there was never a Palestinian capitol much less a Palestinian state. It seems the Arab goal was never a Palestinian state as much as it was that there just not be a Jewish state. Believe it or not…there was no Palestinian state to steal. There never had been an autonomous self governing Palestinian state. The land had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks for four hundred years before it came under the rule of the British Mandate in 1917. Israel got its land from a U.N. recognition and the rest of it from the spoils of wars they did not start and did not invite.

The 160,000 Palestinians who stayed within the border of Israel during the war became citizens of the Israeli state. Today their number has grown to over two million with the right to vote, to engage with their own political parties, and have seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Israel did not start the War in 1948. It simply refused to lose it.

The next popular talking point in the propaganda war with Israel states—“Israel refused to grant the Palestinians a state of their own.” But—Believer it or Not—it also is not true. Initially, it was not Israel’s to grant. The United Nations offered the Palestinians, like the Israelis, an autonomous state of their own in 1948, with access to Jerusalem. But, their Arab leaders appeared to be more interested in keeping Israel from having a homeland than in providing one for their Palestinian brothers. So, they chose war believing that in a short time their combined forces would annihilate the tiny new Jewish state resulting in the whole of the land “from the river to the sea” being free for a state without any Israeli entity next door. Tragically this resulted in what became a lifetime of terrorism instead of what could have been a Palestinian state of their own.

Believe it or not, the real tragedy for the Palestinians did not occur in 1948 but in the two decades that followed. From 1948 until the Six Day War in 1967 Jordan was in complete control of the entire West Bank, a land mass of well over 2,000 square miles. At the same time, Egypt was in complete control of the entirety of Gaza. At any time during those two whole decades those two Arab nations could have created an independent Palestinian state with full rights, passports, and dignity. But they refused and relegated them to refugee camps where they have remained for generations.

Again, after the Oslo Accords, President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, offered PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat an independent Palestinian State in 2000. It would have consisted of 97% of the West Bank including the Gaza Strip with the added incentive of a capitol in East Jerusalem. Arafat outrightly rejected the offer. In place of forming a Palestinian state with the billions of dollars of aid flowing to them from the nations of the world, he armed militias and launched an Intifada of terror.

This was followed in 2008 with a land for peace proposal by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas which would have created an independent Palestinian state. But this too was rejected without any type of counter proposal as well.

Tragically, the Palestinian people have been the convenient pawns in the hands of not only their Arab cousins in adjoining nations, but their own leaders as well. The repetitive refusal to create their own state has given rise to the theory that the complete destruction of the Jewish state is far more important than the establishment of an independent and autonomous Palestinian entity. No wonder their battle cry to this day is “From the River to the Sea Palestine must be free!”

Palestinian refugees, numbering six million today, are left to live in the squalor of refugee camps with little hope of any semblance of upward mobility. Today the fourth generation of Palestinian refugees are being raised in these breeding grounds of hatred for the Jews manifested in children’s text books and fomenting into rage by the time they reach their teenage years.

The hard cold facts are that on several occasions the Palestinian people could have had their own state in a land to call their own. But, believe it or not, Israel is not the main culprit here. The problem sadly lies within their own Arab family. As the late Abba Eban, prominent politician and diplomat, famously quipped, “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Perhaps the most outrageous accusation against Israel today is that they are an apartheid state. But—Believe it or not—it, too, is not true. An apartheid state is defined as an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group. The classic example of such was found in South Africa. For example, for decades South Africans were legally separated specifically by race. Proof of their apartheid approach was seen in the fact that Blacks had no vote, could not participate in the political process, could not attend white universities, run for office, serve in the parliament, or serve as judges in the legal process. South Africa was a bonafide example of a true apartheid state.

Those who accuse Israel of being an apartheid state seem to be blind to the fact that Arabs living within the State of Israel have none of these restrictions. They participate in the political process, vote in Israeli elections, run for office, serve in the parliament (Knesset), attend Israeli universities and are active in all phases of the legal experience. For example, several Israeli Palestinian Arabs have risen to the rank of Supreme Court Justices on Israel’s highest court. Until recently, Salim Joubran, a Palestinian from Haifa, was the deputy Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme Court. On the political side, Palestinian Mansour Abbas, an elected member of the Knesset, has served as acting Speaker of the House, and Deputy Minister within the Prime Minister’s office.

The same is true in the business world. Bank Leumi is the largest and most prestigious bank in all of Israel. Its well known and highly successful President and Executive Chairman, Samer Haj-Yehia, is a Palestinian Arab from the village of Tayibe. When visiting Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital you will find Palestinian physicians working alongside Israeli doctors and in many cases leading whole departments. At Hebrew University 21% of the student body are Palestinian Arabs studying alongside their Israeli Jewish classmates and excelling in the education process.

The next time you hear the cry, “Israel is an Apartheid State,” just know that—Believe it or Not—there is no validity to this ludicrous accusation.

While Gaza continues to demand the news today, those running the propaganda wars against Israel seem to have forgotten the Gaza of 2005. That year Israel withdrew completely from the entire Gaza Strip turning it entirely over to Palestinian leadership. In a gut wrenching display of resettlement Israel removed 21 entire Jewish settlements from Gaza numbering nine thousand inhabitants. They withdrew every single soldier leaving a piece of land totally under the control of the Palestinians with an entire western border of beaches on the beautiful Mediterranean coast.

With billions of dollars of aid from the nations of the world flowing to them, Gaza had the promise of becoming the new “Pearl of the Middle East” complete with deluxe beach front resorts. But, what did the leadership do? Did they get busy at work to build an infrastructure of commerce to enable the growth of a thriving community of cities and towns complete with any and all types of social services for the citizenry? No. They chose to use the money to build a terror network instead. They built rockets and launchers of all kinds. They smuggled armed shipments into Gaza and imbedded them in hospitals, schools and mosques. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars building 500 miles of terror tunnels throughout the entire strip. They armed a militia of militants intent on the destruction of the Jewish state.

What could have become of Gaza is never mentioned in the propaganda wars against Israel. It is simply the same old song, with repetitive verses that always sing the same lyric, “Blame the Jews...Blame the Jews for everything.”

Finally, the most repeated of the outlandish claims against Israel is that it is guilty of genocide in Gaza. Well—Believer it or Not- that is a lie as well. Those who are so quick to repeat this false accusation must never have taken the time to study what genocide really entails. The United Nations defines genocide as “specific destructive acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

The most well known attempt at genocide was the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of Nazi Germany (1933-1945). This genocide, by far the most documented, resulted in the murder of six million Jews, one third of the entire world population of Jews. This was preceded by the Armenian Holocaust (1915-1916) when Ottoman Turks slaughtered 664,000 Armenian Christians, one half of the population, in an attempt to eradicate the entire community. More recently, the world witnessed the Rwanda Genocide (1994) when one million members of the Tutsi tribe were murdered in a long series of massacres by the ruling Hutu led government.

Attempts to brand Israel with the label of genocide are as false as false can be. If Israel was intent on genocide, with their mighty military machine, they could have wiped out the entire population of Gaza within a week after the horrific atrocities committed upon them on October 7, 2023. With their superior intelligence networks they were well aware that Hamas had imbedded their command centers and weapon depots in hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, mosques, and other residential areas so as to use their own people as human shields against Israeli retaliation. Yet, by every means possible, leaflets dropped from above, millions of text messages, and through every other conceivable avenue, they sought to warn the population to flee areas before they continued their retaliatory attacks. Israel lost two thousand of their finest young sons and daughters fighting in the Hamas war seeking to free the hostages. If they had been about the business of a genocide it could have easily been accomplished without a prolonged war that resulted in these two thousand dead Israeli soldiers. Ambassador Mike Huckabee observed that If, indeed, Israel was perpetrating a genocide on the Palestinians, since the population of Gaza had actually grown three years after the war began on October 7, 2023, they were not very good at it.

The international recognized authority on urban warfare is U.S. Army Major John Spencer. Spencer is the chair of urban war studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute. After studying in detail the Gaza War, he stated, “Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history.” He indicated that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) have set a new standard for mitigating civilian casualties by utilizing tracking technologies, direct phone calls, text messages, deploying drones and loud speakers, and instituting tactical pauses in engagement to safely evacuate civilians from combat zones. He maintains that accusations of genocide against Israel are lies driven by “Hamas propaganda and media distortion.”

During the Gaza War, Israel provided tons of food to Gazan civilians as well as immunizing hundreds of thousands of Gazan children against infection and disease. These humanitarian actions, and many others like them, run counter to any accusations of genocide.

The propaganda war against Israel, funneled by billions of dollars of outside money and fueled by unchecked and unsubstantiated claims on social media, often enabled by main stream media outlets, is in full force. While they continue to spread the lies that Israel is a war monger, that they stole Arab land, prevented the Palestinians from achieving statehood, are guilty of apartheid and genocide—Believe it or Not—the record is plain—it is simply and demonstrably not true.

Israel did not start all of this. However, they simply have no choice but to finish it. This war of words boils down to whether you are interested in half truths with no valid factual substantiation, whether you buy into the whole lie, or whether you are interested in real facts rather than mere fiction. The facts are plain and the evidence is overwhelming, whether you…BELIEVE IT OR NOT!