Looking For Truth In All The Wrong Places

That’s what happens when the Right places hide the truth—people sooner or later start looking for the truth elsewhere. I can’t remember where I came across this video, because I never watch MSNBC. It dates back to May 15, 2021 and exhibits that broken clock phenomenon—right twice a day. It may be possible to quibble with a few details, but the overall thrust is undoubtedly correct. For those who need it, it’s a worthwhile antidote to the narrative that’s relentlessly peddled in much of the American and Western media. But, as Velshi says, it’s not a secret. Somebody is trying to hide the ball, that’s all—but you’re free to look at the truth if you want to.

Transcript:

Let's make one thing clear. Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That’s an indisputable fact. But so do Palestinians - and that's a fact that's often ignored.

Palestinians are, at best, third class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it's even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at a map of Israel, Gaza, and the Occupied Territories conjures up only one other example: apartheid era South Africa. The Israeli government, on an ongoing basis, declares parcels of land on which Palestinians live to be either of military or archeological importance, causing residents to be evicted. Sometimes there’s a court case, and almost always, the Palestinians lose. Yet months or weeks later, that same “important” land suddenly becomes home to a brand-new Israeli settlement. As more and more Jewish settlers take over land on which Arabs lived, the Occupied West Bank becomes de facto more Israeli and, in the explicit hopes of the Israeli government, more Jewish. This is a long-standing attempt and a deliberate attempt to force Arabs - who have lived in that land sometimes for hundreds of years - out. It is an attempt to dilute their presence, because to have Arabs as full participants is, in the opinion of the Israeli government and their courts, diluting Israel.

Just prior to the pandemic I toured many of the areas and homes from which Arabs are being pushed out--both in Israel proper and in the occupied territories. Palestinians don't control the important parts of their lives. Palestinian families are refused permits to build or renovate their homes. When they connect their homes to the municipal water supply, Israeli soldiers sometimes cut the pipes. When they attempt to harness solar energy because their homes are not on the grid, Israeli soldiers literally come and remove solar panels from their homes. I spent an hour and a half traveling alongside an elderly Palestinian woman who was being transferred between *three ambulances* from Gaza into the no-man's land in between and then into Israel to get cancer treatment. Three ambulances over the course of one mile, more than an hour to cross the border! That's how Gazans live. Without medical treatment, because Israel prevents it. Without electricity much of the time, because Israel prevents it. Without the ability to fish in the Mediterranean Ocean [sic], because Israel prevents it. Without an airport or seaport, because Israel prevents it.

Like Israelis, Palestinians also have a right to exist and to defend themselves, but there is no one willing to help them do that--not the Israeli courts, and not the US government. What the US also shares with Israel is the belief that Hamas, the political party that governs Gaza, is a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas is supported by the majority of Moslems in Gaza. Hamas may not be in the best long term interest of the Gazans, but peace hasn't really worked out for them. Faced by an Israeli government that pens them into what has been called the world's largest open air prison, they have chosen a government that most of us wouldn't prefer. One that is not given to negotiation and moderation and respect for its neighbor. Israel needs a new approach to the Palestinians, and America needs a new approach to Israel.

After seven decades of not just being deprived of land from which they were evicted Palestinian frustration runs deep. It may be worth going deeper than what you hear inside your bubble and understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subjected to apartheid within their own land, deprived of basic necessities, and subject to relentless civil rights violations. This is not a secret. It's out there for you to see. You just have to look for it.

There has been quite a bit of speculation as to what sparked the Hamas attack. It’s not actually a secret. As Alastair Crooke has pointed out, the name for the Hamas operation invokes the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which is located on the historic site of the ancient Israelite and Jewish temples in Jerusalem. The mosque—which is considered by Muslims to be one of their top three holy sites—has been destroyed several times by earthquakes, but has been standing in one form or another since the late seventh century. On October 5, 2023, in the most recent of what have become repeated events since around 2001, more than 800 Jewish radicals, protected by Israeli military, forced their way into the mosque, evicted Muslim worshippers, and held a Jewish religious service. The question arises: Was this a deliberate provocation that was intended to incite a response that would justify radical Israeli government actions? In fact, that response had been in preparation since the invasions of the mosque first began—a response that Israel proved unprepared to deal with in its initial stages. There is reason to believe this may have been the case. The mosque has become a rallying point and a symbol for resistance to the Israeli occupation, both in Palestine and throughout the Muslim world. This fact was well known to Israeli authorities. This article, dated in December, 2022, ties the “settlements” issue to the Al Aqsa issue, given that the motivators of both issues are largely coextensive:

Netanyahu government makes West Bank settlement expansion its priority

Hardline coalition vows to legalise dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory

This Wikipedia entry describes the most recent conflicts surrounding the mosque, although it stops well short of the continuation of these conflicts in 2023:

Conflicts

Further information: 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis and 2022 Al-Aqsa Mosque storming

In April 2021, during both Passover and Ramadan, the site was a focus of tension between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. Jewish settlers broke an agreement between Israel and Jordan and performed prayers and read from the Torah inside the compound, an area normally off limits to non-Muslims.^[203] On 14 April, Israeli police entered the area and forcibly cut wires to speakers in minarets around the mosque, silencing the call to prayer, claiming the sound was interfering with an event by the Israeli president at the Western Wall.^[204] On 16 April, seventy thousand Muslims prayed in the compound around the mosque, the largest gathering since the beginning of the COVID pandemic; police barred most from entering the structure itself.^[205] In May 2021, hundreds of Palestinians were injured following clashes in the compound after reports of Israel's intention to proceed to evict Palestinians from land claimed by Israeli settlers.^[206][207]

On 15 April 2022, Israeli forces entered the Temple Mount and used tear gas shells and sound bombs to disperse Palestinians who, they said, were throwing stones at policemen. Some Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque, where they were detained by Israeli police. Over 150 people ended up injured and 400 arrested.^{[208][209][210]}

In popular culture

The term "al-Aqsa" as a symbol and brand-name has become popular and prevalent in the region.^[19] For example, the Al-Aqsa Intifada (the uprising that broke out in September 2000), the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (a coalition of Palestinian nationalist militias in the West Bank), al-Aqsa TV (the official Hamas-run television channel), al-Aqsa University (Palestinian university established in 1991 in the Gaza Strip), Jund al-Aqsa (a Salafist jihadist organization that was active during the Syrian Civil War), the Jordanian military periodical published since the early 1970s, and the associations of both the southern and northern branches of the Islamic Movement in Israel are all named Al-Aqsa after this site.^[19]

The popular political slogan Al-Aqsa is in danger has been used to oppose efforts such as the Temple Mount Faithful's to take control of the compound, as well as to oppose archaeological investigations perceived as either undermining the structural foundations of the area or attempting to prove the existence of an ancient Jewish temple on the site.

For a general overview, I recommend this article:

Why did Hamas attack, and why now? What does it hope to gain?