Seven Lies About Israel
What the historical record actually shows
LIE #1 ‘Jews are foreign European colonizers.’
LIE #2 ‘Israel was created by stealing Palestinian land.’
LIE #3 ‘Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in peace until Israel was created.’
LIE #4 ‘The occupation is the cause of the conflict.’
LIE #5 ‘Israel’s response is disproportionate. Look at the death toll.’
LIE #6 ‘Israel is an apartheid state.’
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LIE #1 ‘Jews are foreign European colonizers.’
Jewish nationhood originated in the Land of Israel. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jerusalem as the Jewish capital, the Hebrew language, Jewish Scripture, and Jewish national identity arose there.
The name is ancient: 1 Samuel 13:19 and Ezekiel 40:2 call it the “land of Israel.” Centuries later, Matthew 2:20-21 uses the same expression under Roman rule.[1]
In 1947, UNSCOP acknowledged historical roots in the land for both Jews and Arabs. Modern political Zionism developed largely in Europe; Jewish origins did not. Israel also became home to large Jewish populations from Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.[2]
The Jewish connection to the land predates modern Zionism by millennia.
LIE #2 ‘Israel was created by stealing Palestinian land.’
This is false. There was no sovereign Palestinian Arab state in 1948 for Israel to annex.
Jews legally purchased land under Ottoman and British rule. British-era statistics for 1945 recorded about 1.49 million dunams as Jewish-owned and 12.77 million as Arab-owned. Most privately owned land was still Arab-owned. The state was not created by buying the country acre by acre. [3]
The land passed from the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate. In 1947 the UN proposed a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish Agency accepted partition. The Arab Higher Committee rejected it.[2]
War followed. Five Arab armies invaded the new State of Israel. In that war many Arabs fled or were displaced, and many Jews were expelled from the Old City of Jerusalem and from communities overrun in the fighting. That displacement is real. It is not the same as saying Israel was founded by stealing an existing country.[4]
LIE #3 ‘Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in peace until Israel was created.’
This is false. There was no golden age of uninterrupted peace or equality that ended in 1948.
Under Ottoman rule, Jews and Christians lived as dhimmis—second-class subjects required to pay the jizya and subject to legal disabilities. The same system produced major massacres of Christians, including the 1860 Mount Lebanon killings. [5]
By the twentieth century the record of anti-Jewish violence is clear:
1920 — Jerusalem (Nebi Musa): 5 Jews killed, more than 200 injured. Synagogues attacked, Torah scrolls desecrated. Arab assailants broke into Jewish homes, looted property, and raped at least two Jewish women. [6]
1921 — Jaffa: 47 Jews killed, 146 injured. Crowds attacked Jewish homes, shops, and an immigrant hostel for new arrivals. The British Haycraft Commission found that “the racial strife was begun by Arabs” and that Arabs were “generally the aggressors.” [7]
1929 — Hebron and Safed: Arab mobs murdered 67 Jews in Hebron, including women and children. Synagogues were desecrated, homes looted, and bodies mutilated. The ancient Jewish community was forced to leave. Days later, attackers killed 18–20 Jews in Safed. [8]
1936–1939 — Arab Revolt: Approximately 415 Jews killed before the State of Israel existed. [9]
1948 did not create this violence. Deadly anti-Jewish riots were already occurring more than 25 years before Israel existed.
LIE #4 ‘The occupation is the cause of the conflict.’
The chronology does not fit that claim. The war against a Jewish state began before Israel controlled Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) or Gaza.
The PLO was founded in 1964, when Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Egypt administered Gaza. The PLO’s 1968 charter declared: “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.” [10]
Hamas’s 1988 covenant went beyond borders. Article 7 cites the hadith: “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews … there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas’s later documents softened the language. They still rejected Israel’s right to exist from the river to the sea. [11]
The targets were not limited to “occupied territory”:
1972 — Munich: Black September murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes.[12]
1982 — Rome: Palestinian terrorists attacked the Great Synagogue, killing a two-year-old Jewish child and wounding dozens. [12]
1985 — Achille Lauro: Palestinian terrorists murdered Jewish-American passenger on the hijacked ocean liner Leon Klinghoffer. [12]
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas seized control in 2007, fired rockets for years, and launched the October 7 massacre. Ending Israeli presence there did not end the war. [13]
Israeli control of land captured in 1967 cannot explain organizations, charters, and attacks that already existed before 1967.
LIE #5 ‘Israel’s response is disproportionate. Look at the death toll.’
Proportionality does not mean equal body counts. The legal test asks whether the expected civilian harm from a specific attack would be excessive compared with the concrete military advantage anticipated. [14]
The ongoing war followed the October 7, 2023 massacre, in which Hamas-led attackers murdered about 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostages. Hamas fights from tunnels, schools, hospitals, and dense neighborhoods. The purpose of their strategy is to raise civilian deaths and minimize their own fighter casualties. [15]
As of late September 2026, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths. That headline total does not separate civilians from combatants. Israel has said more than 20,000 of the dead were militants. The exact breakdown remains disputed. [16]
High civilian losses also occur when other armies fight embedded forces in cities:
Mosul (2016–17): an AP investigation estimated roughly 9,000–11,000 civilians killed in the campaign against ISIS. [17]
Raqqa (2017): Amnesty International and Airwars found at least 1,600 civilians killed by U.S.-led coalition strikes; much of the city was left in ruins. [17]
A larger death toll on one side does not, by itself, prove a war is illegal.
LIE #6 ‘Israel is an apartheid state.’
This is false. Arab citizens of Israel vote in the same national elections as Jewish citizens, sit in the Knesset, and have served as cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices. A state that gives those powers to its Arab citizens is not South Africa. [18]
About one-fifth of Israel’s citizens are Arab. They are not barred from political life because they are Arab.
Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is different because the borders of a future Palestinian state were never agreed. After 1967, and later under Oslo, Israelis and Palestinians lived under different civil and security arrangements in an unfinished war. That is a territorial conflict, not a racial caste system inside Israel.
Apartheid was a system that denied a racial group the vote and political power in the country where they lived. That description does not fit Israel’s Arab citizens.
LIE #7 ‘Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.’
Genocide is a specific legal charge. It requires acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. Deadly urban war is not automatically genocide. [19]
Israel’s campaign followed the October 7 massacre. Its aims have been to recover hostages and destroy Hamas’s military capacity. Hamas is the target. Palestinians as a people are not.
That distinction shows up in conduct. By March 31, 2024, the IDF reported about 100,000 phone calls, 9.3 million leaflets, 15.5 million text messages, and 17 million recorded warnings to Gaza residents before operations. Mass warnings are evidence against an intent to annihilate the population. [20]
The opposite intent is not hard to find on the other side. Hamas’s covenant calls for fighting and killing Jews. October 7 was that ideology put into practice. [11]
The ICJ has not issued a merits judgment finding genocide. Provisional measures did not decide the case. Scale of destruction cannot replace proof of the specific intent the Genocide Convention requires. [21]
Sources
1 Samuel 13:19; Ezekiel 40:2; Matthew 2:20–21 (“land of Israel”).↩︎
UNSCOP, Report to the General Assembly, A/364 (1947). Also CBS/standard histories of Jewish refugees from Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Libya and elsewhere.↩︎
Government of Palestine, Village Statistics, 1945 (1 April 1945). Jewish-owned: 1,491,699 dunams. Arab-owned: 12,766,524 dunams (about 12.77 million). See Hadawi’s tabulated edition. 12.57 million is the Beersheba sub-district area, not Arab ownership.↩︎
Herzog and Gazit, The Arab-Israeli Wars. Jewish Agency accepted 1947 partition; Arab Higher Committee rejected it; Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded in May 1948.↩︎
Ottoman dhimmi status and the jizya. 1860 Mount Lebanon / Damascus massacres: consular reports and later histories.↩︎
1920 Nebi Musa / Jerusalem riots: 5 Jews killed; 211–216 Jews injured; at least two rapes recorded in period accounts.↩︎
Haycraft Commission, Palestine: Disturbances in May, 1921 (HMSO). Arabs “generally the aggressors.” Jaffa: 47 Jews killed, 146 injured.↩︎
Shaw Commission, Report on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 (HMSO). Hebron: 67 Jews murdered (some counts 65–68). Safed: about 18–20 Jews killed.↩︎
1936–1939 Arab Revolt: about 415 Jews killed (standard secondary figure). JTA, 20 April 1939, estimated about 450.↩︎
PLO founded 1964. Palestinian National Charter (1968), including “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.”↩︎
Hamas Covenant (1988), Art. 7. Hamas 2017 policy document; Mahmoud al-Zahar to Reuters, 10 May 2017.↩︎
Munich 1972; Rome Great Synagogue 1982; Achille Lauro 1985.↩︎
Israel Gaza withdrawal 2005; Hamas takeover 2007; October 7, 2023 attack.↩︎
ICRC Customary IHL, Rule 14 (proportionality).↩︎
October 7, 2023: about 1,200 murdered in Israel; 251 hostages taken.↩︎
Gaza Health Ministry totals via AP/AFP. Late September 2026: about 74,000 (74,016–74,022 on 27–28 Sept. 2026). Total does not separate civilians from combatants. Israel has said more than 20,000 militants killed (later IDF figures around 22,000); not independently verified and disputed.↩︎
AP Mosul investigation (2016–17): about 9,000–11,000 civilians. Amnesty International and Airwars on Raqqa (2017): at least 1,600 civilians killed by U.S.-led coalition strikes.↩︎
Knesset and government records on Arab citizens’ voting rights, Knesset membership, cabinet and Supreme Court service. About one-fifth of Israel’s population.↩︎
Genocide Convention (1948), Article II.↩︎
IDF warning figures as of 31 March 2024: about 100,000 phone calls; 9.3 million leaflets; 15.5 million texts; 17 million recorded warnings. IDF-reported totals.↩︎
ICJ, South Africa v. Israel. Provisional measures did not decide the merits. No merits genocide judgment as of 29 September 2026.↩︎