EP 27: The Myths That Define Israel-Palestine - Part 2: Israeli Self-Defense

In part 2 of my Israel-Palestine myth's series, I take a look at how Israel's "defensive" wars were actually planned expansion and how unconditional US backing enabled complete impunity. From 1967, to Sabra and Shatila, to "mowing the grass" in Gaza, Israel has operated under official doctrine of "intentional disproportionate force" while claiming self-defense. I examine the U.S. role in this impunity and what it means for understanding October 7th and Gaza today. 

Check out my substack page where I tackle some of the episode topics in depth and write about other issues our country and the world are facing today. https://substack.com/@ktdpodcast 

Transcript

0:00

Hello. Welcome back to Connecting the Dots. Today I'm gonna continue with part two of my series on the myths that define Israel and Palestine. In the last episode, I looked at the myth of Palestinian rejectionism, how supposedly out of greed and hatred, Palestinians and Arabs always reject peaceful offers from Israelis. And that's the reason there is no Palestinian state. Well, today I'm going to dive into another foundational myth. The idea that Israel is just defending itself against violent Palestinians, that all of its military actions, all of its wars, all of its operations have been purely defensive. A small vulnerable nation just trying to survive. But before I dive into the history, let me start with an example of what's happening today in Lebanon to give you a clear picture of what Israeli self-defense actually looks like. According to the AP, which obtained an internal UN report, peacekeepers in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL, have faced a dramatic surge of aggressive behavior by Israeli forces over the past year. The number of incidents against peacekeepers jumped from just one in January, 2025 to 27 in December. Throughout 2025, Israeli drones repeatedly dropped grenades near UN patrols. In October one, peacekeeper was wounded. Machine gunfire targeted UN positions. UN vehicles were damaged. In 2026, things have continued to escalate. UNIFIL reported that on January 16th, an Israeli tank opened fire with small caliber bullets. On a UN post. In early February, a drone dropped a stun grenade that exploded near a peacekeeping patrol, and most recently, Israeli forces sprayed herbicide on Lebanese territory, forcing a nine hour suspension of UN peacekeeping activities. Remember, these aren't Hezbollah militants. These are international peacekeepers from neutral countries wearing United Nations blue helmets and clearly marked vehicles patrolling a zone they've monitored for nearly 50 years. These attacks are clear violations of UN Security Council resolutions. And Israel's response? Their military says it is not conducting a deterrence campaign against UNIFIL forces and claims that it takes steps to reduce harm to un nil forces and other international actors. So wounding, peacekeepers, damaging vehicles, dropping grenades and firing on posts that's reducing harm. When you're attacking international peacekeepers monitoring a ceasefire, you agree to, are you really defending yourself or are you the aggressor? The answer seems obvious, but Israel has been able to frame aggression as defense for nearly 80 years because of one crucial factor are unconditional American support. Because 11 minutes after Israel declared independence in 1948, president Harry Truman recognized it. That set a pattern that has continued ever since unconditional American backing a power imbalance that enabled Israel to become the regional superpower. Today I'm going to show you what Israel has done with that backing, how defensive wars were actually planned territorial expansion, how Israel systematically eliminates anyone who might want to negotiate peace. How official Israeli military doctrine calls for intentional disproportionate force. You can't claim self-defense as regional superpower backed by the world's only superpower. When you're creating the very threats you claim to defend against. Like in the previous episode, let's start this story at the beginning, the very founding of Israel in episode 26. I cover the 1948 Naba in detail, the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of villages. Plan Dalet. Today I want to address a specific piece of propaganda about the nakba that I recently came across. It had tens of thousands of views, thousands of comments agreeing with it, claiming that the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe is actually called that because Arabs fail to annihilate the Jews and drive them into the sea. According to this video, the Naba isn't about Palestinian suffering. It's about Arab disappointment. They didn't succeed in genocide. This is a complete inversion of documented history and it's important to understand how this propaganda works because this and so many others like it, are fundamental to how Israel reframes its violence as self-defense. The term Nakba Arabic for catastrophe was coined by Constantine Zurayk, a Syrian historian in his 1948 book, the Meaning of The Disaster. Zurayk was writing about the catastrophe that befell Palestinians, the mass expulsion, the loss of homeland, the destruction of their society. He did criticize Arab military failures and called for self reflection. But the disaster he was describing was Palestinian dispossession, not their failure to commit genocide. This isn't contested. It's in Zurayk's actual text available to anyone who wants to read it. The propaganda video does something even more insidious. It takes a quote from Azzam Pasha, a Secretary General of the Arab League from 19 47, 1 year before the nakba, about a potential war of extermination, and it uses that single quote, the claim, the nakba is about failed genocide. That all Palestinians wanted to exterminate the Jews. One leader's rhetoric before the war even started, and that's supposed to represent hundreds of thousands of Palestinian farmers, shopkeepers teachers, and families who just wanted to live on their land. That's like judging all Americans by the most extreme statements any US politician has ever made. The video also ignores the Mufti. A Palestinian leader who fled British rule and later accepted sanctuary from Nazi Germany before collaborating with them was one problematic leader, not the voice of all Palestinians. And it completely erases what actually happened. Israeli forces expelled 750,000 Palestinians and destroyed over 400 villages. Done according to plan Dalet. Israeli historians working in Israeli military archives, people like Ilan Pape have documented this. Plan Dalet was adopted in March, 1948. It explicitly called for destruction of villages and expulsion of Palestinian population centers. This wasn't spontaneous. This wasn't self-defense against genocide. This was planned ethnic cleansing to create a Jewish demographic majority, and when Palestinians call it the nakba, the catastrophe, they're describing what was done to them, not lamenting a failed genocide that exists only in propaganda. I am spending time on this because this kind of inversion claiming that victims, calling their dispossession a catastrophe, are actually genocidal aggressors is the core of Israeli self-defense mythology. If you can make people believe that Palestinians are inherently violent, that they've always wanted to annihilate Jews, that every Israeli action is just desperate self-defense against genocide. Then you can justify 78 years of occupation, settlement expansion, periodic massacres, and now genocide and Gaza. This video is emblematic of mainstream discourse about Israel and Palestine. Inverting aggressor and victim offense and defense. So my goal for this episode is to look at the actual pattern, not through propaganda, but documented history. The 1948 war was the first, but not the last war. Israel fought against Arabs. They clashed again in 1956, and tensions remained high over the years, but it was a 1967 war that would prove most consequential. In May, 1967, Egypt's President Nassar mobilized troops in the Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Israel's foreign minister Abba Eban flew to Washington. Meet with President Lyndon Johnson on May 26th. As Rashid Khalidi documents in his book, the a hundred Years War on Palestine. Eban told Johnson that Egypt was about to attack Israel. Johnson asked the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, to set the record straight. McNamara replied, three separate intelligence groups have looked carefully into the matter, and it is our best judgment that an attack is not imminent. All of our intelligence people are unanimous. Johnson added, and even if Egypt attacks, you would whip the hell out of them". Washington knew that Israel's military in 1967 was far superior to all the Arab militaries combined and would crush them in any, in all circumstances. And Israeli generals agreed. Five years after the war, five Israeli generals stated publicly that Israel had never been in danger of annihilation, that Israeli forces were much stronger than the Arab armies and that Israel would've won even if the Arabs had struck first. But there's another layer to understanding. 1967 as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documents in his book, 10 Myths About Israel, the Israeli political and military elite regarded the 1948 war as a missed opportunity, a historical moment in which Israel could should have occupied the whole of historical Palestine from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Think about that. In 1948, Israel took 78% of historic Palestine. They expelled 750,000 Palestinians. They destroyed over 400 villages, and the Israeli elite considered that a missed opportunity because they didn't take all of it. Pappe continues "ever since 1948. Important sections of the Jewish cultural, military, and political elites have been looking for an opportunity to rectify this mistake. From the mid 1960s onwards they carefully planned how to create a greater Israel that would include the West Bank." Israeli leadership had nearly executed the plan in 1958 and 1960, only to draw back at the last minute to the fears of international reaction and demographic concerns. But as Pappe writes, the best opportunity came within a 1967 war. And Israel didn't just plan this on its own, it coordinated with the United States. Khalidi documents that Israel had been stung by strong American opposition to its 1956. Sue has operation, so as they prepared for the 1967 first strike, Israeli leaders were determined to get prior American approval. That approval came on June 1st. Four days before the attack at a meeting in Washington, major General LA Mayor Amit Heda Mossad told Secretary of Defense McNamara that he was going to recommend to his government that Israel launched a first strike attack. He asked McNamara for assurances that the United States would not react negatively according to Amit's own account. McNamara replied, "all right", and would tell the president. He asked only how long the war would last and what Israeli casualties might be. Johnson and McNamara had already heard from their advisors that the Arabs were not going to attack and that Israel would win overwhelmingly. Despite that, the Israeli military still got the green light it needed, and the United States helped Israel in other ways too. As Khalidi documents, Jordan's ambassador to the UN later described what he called American duplicity. US Ambassador Arthur Goldberg had told Arab ambassadors that the United States was mediating with Israel to diffuse the crisis and would restrain it from attacking while urging the Arab ambassadors to council restraint to their governments. Meanwhile, the Johnson administration had given Israel the go. To launch its surprise attack. Just before Egypt's vice president arrived in Washington for negotiations to resolve the crisis. The Arab ambassadors have been used to deceive their own governments. On June 5th, 1967, Israel launched its attack in the first hours. Israeli war planes destroyed most Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian aircraft on the ground before they ever took off. With complete air superiority. Israeli armored columns conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights. The war lasted six days. After the war as Pappe documents, "the whole of Israeli society was galvanized around the Messianic project of liberating the holy place of Judaism with Jerusalem as a jewel in the new crown of Greater Israel. There was no intention of leaving the West Bank and the Gaza Strip immediately after their occupation. In fact, there was no desire to leave them at all." The United Nations Security Council passed resolution 2 42, shortly after the war. Demanding Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. Israel refused. As Pappe writes, the government's resistance to international pressure showed how important this historical junction was for Israel. They weren't going to give back what they'd been planning to take for 19 years. So the story we've been told for nearly 60 years is a lie. This wasn't the war of self-defense. It was a war of choice to complete the territorial expansion that began in 1948 The 59 year occupation began with an offensive war disguised as defensive necessity. By 19 75, 1 thing was undeniable America would back Israel no matter what it did, but that year something happened that would lock in that unconditional support permanently. Khalidi documents that as part of the Sinai two agreement, secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford gave Israel written assurances about future US peace initiatives. Essentially, the United States promised it would not advance any Middle East peace plan involving Israel without Israel's prior approval. Think about what that means. The supposed mediator, the US gave one party complete veto power over any peace proposal. From 1975 forward, Israel could block any American initiative toward Palestinian statehood, and every administration since then has honored that commitment. But even after giving Israel this unprecedented VETO power, some American officials still tried to do their jobs. According to Khalidi. In 1978, the CIA and the US Ambassador to Lebanon began direct clandestine talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organization were PLO about potential peace arrangements In Israel's view, this violated the 1975 memorandum. So when Israeli intelligence discovered what was happening, they reacted forcefully. In January, 1979. Mossad agents in Beirut, assassinated Ali Hassan Salama, known as Abu Hassan. By bombing his car, Israel publicly claimed salami was targeted for his alleged role in 1972, Munich Olympic Attacks. But Israeli intelligence officers later admitted the real reason they wanted to cut the communication channel between the United States and the PLO. One Israeli officer. Put it bluntly. The assassination was meant to give the Americans a hint that this was no way to behave towards friends. So Israel didn't just kill a Palestinian leader. They killed them specifically because he was talking to the United States about peace. That assassination didn't stop the talks entirely. They continued in even deeper secrecy. Ambassador John Gunther Dean was ordered to maintain the channels of communication with the PLO. in 1980, Dean survived an assassination attempt in Beirut. A group called the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from foreigners. Claimed responsibility. But as Khalidi notes, Israeli intelligence sources later confirmed it was an Israeli controlled operation. The 1975 veto wasn't just a diplomatic agreement. Israel was prepared to enforce it with whatever means necessary and faced no consequences. Okay. So I wanna take a step back here for a moment. Because honestly, when I first heard about this 1975 VETO Power, it floored me. It cast everything into a new light, completely reframing everything I thought in you about the peace process camp David Oslo, the Abraham Accords. Suddenly it all made sense. The United States was never a neutral mediator. Israel had Vito power from the start. Once you see that pattern, Israel manipulating US policy to get what it wants. You start to notice it everywhere, even before 1975, not just in peace negotiations, but in how Israel has acted directly against the American interests for decades with complete impunity. Let me show you what I mean. In 1967, during the six day war, Israeli forces attacked the USS Liberty, a clearly marked American intelligence ship in international waters. 34 Americans were killed. 171 were wounded. The attack lasted over two hours. Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats made multiple passes. Israel claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. But survivors and investigators have documented that the ship was flying a large American flag. The attack was sustained and deliberate, and Israeli forces jammed the US communications during the assault. The United States accepted Israel's explanation and provided compensation to the families. No one was held accountable. Fast forward to 1985. Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy Intelligence Analyst, was caught spying for Israel. He had passed massive amounts of classified US intelligence to Israel for years. Some of the most sensitive information the United States possessed. Israel initially denied it was a government operation, claiming Pollard was working with a rogue element. Later, Israel admitted the operation but faced minimal consequences. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020. And the pattern continues through today. June, 2024, POLITICO documented that at least 128 members of Congress were targeted by an Israeli government backed disinformation campaign. Separate reporting from the New York Times citing Israeli officials showed that Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs spent $2 million hiring a political marketing firm to create 600 fake social media profiles. These fake accounts posing as Americans unleashed over 2000 coordinated comments per week on lawmaker's, accounts backing Israel's military actions, and dismissing human rights abuses in Gaza. Targets included Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, Senator Raphael Warnock, house Speaker Mike Johnson, and members like Ilhan Umar and Jim Clyburn. When confronted Israel denied involvement despite its own officials confirming it to the New York Times. So Israel can kill 34 American soldiers. Spy on its closest ally tried to assassinate US ambassadors and now run disinformation campaigns against US lawmakers. This is what impunity looks like. And in 1982, the world watched that impunity play out catastrophically in Lebanon. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told the Israeli cabinet the goal was to expel the PLO from Lebanon, but as Khalidi documents sharon's real objective was Palestine. He thought breaking the PLO in Lebanon would weaken Palestinian resistance everywhere, making the West Bank and Gaza easier to control and annex. Israeli Chief of Staff, Mordecai Guer summed it up. "The idea was to limit the PLO leadership's influence in order to provide us with greater freedom of action in the occupied territories." But Sharon couldn't just invade. He needed American approval and international justification. On May 25th, 1982, 10 days before the invasion, Sharon met with the US Secretary of State Alexander Haig in Washington. Sharon laid out his ambitious war plan in explicit detail, giving Haig a much fuller picture than he later presented to the Israeli cabinet. Haig's response, he told Sharon, there must be a "recognizable provocation, one that would be understood internationally." 10 days later, that provocation arrived. On June 3rd, 1982. Israel's ambassador to the uk, Shlomo Argov was shot in Lebanon. The assassination attempt was allegedly carried out by the Abu Nidal Group, a Palestinian organization that was hostile to the PLO and had been trying to undermine Yassar Arafat. So the attack that gave Israel its recognizable provocation was supposedly carried out by a group that opposed the PLO. Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6th anyways, using an attack by the P'S enemies as justification to destroy the PLO. To secure the PLO's evacuation from Beirut, Khalidi noted that the United States provided written pledges to shield the civilians in the refugee camps and neighborhoods of West Beirut. Typed on plain paper without letterhead or signatures, these memos guaranteed "that law abiding Palestinian non-combatants remaining in Beirut will be authorized to live in peace and security. The Lebanese and US governments would provide appropriate security guarantees on the basis of assurances received from the government of Israel." It was on the basis of these assurances that the PLO agreed to leave Beirut. A few weeks after the PLO forces were gone on September 14th, Lebanese President elect Bashir Gaal, an Israeli ally was assassinated. Israeli forces immediately entered an occupied West Beirut, despite promises to the United States that it would not do so. Then on the night of September 16th, Rashid Khalidi and his wife watched from their shelter as Israeli flares floated down in the darkness, one after another. Over the southern reaches of Beirut. Khalidi writes, "we were baffled. Armies normally used flares to illuminate a battlefield. The ceasefire had been signed a month earlier. All the Palestinian fighters had left Weeks ago. The city was quiet." They could hear no explosions, no shooting. The following evening, two shaken American journalists came to tell the Khalidi's what they had seen. Throughout the previous night, Israeli army flares had illuminated the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps for the Phalangist militias whom Israel has sent there as they slaughtered defenseless civilians. Between September 16th and the morning of September 18th, the militia man murdered more than 1,300 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women and children. An Israeli Commission of Inquiry, the Kahan Commission established that Prime Minister Begin, Defense minister Sharon, and senior Israeli military commanders were all responsible for the massacre. But Israeli state archive documents released in 2012 revealed even more damning evidence. As Khalidi documents, they exposed long and deliberate decisions by Sharon and others to send the Phalangist Militias, known killers into the Palestinian refugee camps with the aim of massacring and driving away their populations. Sharon and other Israeli leaders knew full well of the atrocities that Phalangist's had perpetrated earlier in the war. They knew of their lethal intentions towards Palestinians. They sent them in anyway. As the massacre occurred, Sharon told the unsuspecting US Envoy, "there are thousands of terrorists in Beirut. We'll kill them. We're not going to save them." And the documents show how American diplomats were repeatedly brow beaten by their Israeli counterparts and failed to stop the slaughter the US government had promised to prevent. When the US official tried to challenge Israeli actions. A 33-year-old deputy to the Israeli ambassador named Benjamin Netanyahu threatened "you will force us into a shooting war with each other." The US backed down. This was Netanyahu's introduction to US- Israel relations. Sharon lost his position as defense minister, but he remained in the government, and 19 years later, in 2001, Israelis elected him as Prime Minister. This is the same Sharon, who in September, 2000 made a deliberately provocative visit to the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites in Islam, surrounded by hundreds of armed Israeli police. The final catalyst for the second Intifada. And the same Sharon, who upon being elected Prime Minister in February, 2001, immediately killed the Taba peace negotiations that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators said had brought them closer than ever to an agreement. The man responsible for the Sabra and Chatila massacre became Prime Minister and used that position to sabotage peace. In the decades that followed, the tactics used against Palestinians remain brutal and deadly, particularly in Israel's repeated assaults on Gaza. To understand them, you need to understand something called the Dahiya doctrine, which Khalidi documents in detail. It's named after Southern Suburb in Beirut Al-Dahiya, which Israel destroyed in 2006. Using 2000 pound bombs. In 2008, major general Gadi Eisenkot then head of Israel's Northern Command and later chief of staff explained the strategy explicitly. "What happened in the Dahiya quarter will happen. Every village from which Israel is fired on, we will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases." And then Eisenkot said something crucial. "This is not a recommendation. This is a plan, and it has been approved." This wasn't a rogue general. This was official Israeli military doctrine. Intentional, deliberate, disproportionate force against civilian areas. Between 2008 and 2014, Israel launched three major operations against Gaza using this doctrine Operation Cast lead in 2008 and 2009, there had been an Egypt brokerage truce that sharply reduced rocket fire. On November 4th, 2008, Israel carried out an incursion in the Gaza and killed several Hamas fighters. The ceasefire collapsed. Israel launched massive airstrikes on December 27th. 1400 Palestinians were killed. 13 Israelis. Operation. Pillar of Defense. In 2012, Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, head of Hamas' military wing. Then launched an operation. 160 plus palestinians died as did six Israelis Operation Protective Edge In 2014, after three Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed in the West Bank. Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians. Tensions escalated. Israel then launched the 51 day assault. As a result, over 2200 Palestinians were killed including 551 children, while 73 Israelis also died. 66 of them soldiers, seven civilians. Each time Israel claimed it was responding to Hamas rockets, but the pattern was clear. Israel would take provocative or disproportionate action. Rockets would increase in response. Then Israel would launch pre-planned major operations. Now let's talk about those Hamas rockets for a moment Most were Soviet design rockets with warheads of 44 to 66 pounds. Few had guidance systems. None were precision guided. The roughly 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza that reached Israel between 2008 and 2014 would've had less explosive power in total than about a dozen Israeli 2000 pound bombs. Let that sink in. All the Hamas rockets combined. 4,000 rockets over six years, had the explosive power of 12 Israeli bombs. I want to give you some specific numbers from 2014 because the scale is staggering. Over 51 days, Israel launched over 6,000 air attacks and fired about 50,000 artillery and tank shells. Together, they utilized 21 kilotons or 42 million pounds of high explosives. For perspective, the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons. According to the Israeli Air Force Commander, there were several hundred attacks using 2000 pound bombs. Each of these bombs creates a crater 50 feet wide and 36 feet deep with shrapnel fragmenting to a radius of almost a quarter mile. In 1 24 hour period, 11 artillery battalions fired over 7,000. Shes into a single neighborhood. That included 4,800 shells in seven hours, about one shell every five seconds. A senior Pentagon officer called the scale of Firepower, massive and deadly, noting the US Army would normally use that one's firepower in support of 40,000 troops, perhaps 10 times the size of Israeli forces engaged. A retired American general called it "absolutely disproportionate". Between 2008 and 2014, Hamas rockets killed about 26 Israeli civilians. While over that same time period, Israel killed at least 3,800 Palestinian civilians. The civilian casualty ratio was nearly 150 to one. Khalidi writes, "if the death of several dozen Israeli civilians over six years likely rises to the level of war crimes, what then of the killing in 2014 alone have at least 2000 civilians not engaged in combat?" Israeli officials and analysts began using the chilling phrase, "mowing the grass". As the Washington Post reported in 2021, the phrase was popularized by Israeli military analysts and Etan Samir, who wrote that Israel simply needs to mow the grass once in a while to degrade enemy capabilities. The metaphor is explicit. Palestinian militants and weapons are like weeds that need to be cut back. Israeli officials have been open about it. Yo Gallant, a former military commander, said in 2014, "this sort of maintenance needs to be carried out from time to time. Perhaps even more often." This wasn't about eliminating Hamas. This was about periodically degrading gaza's capacity to resist. Destroying infrastructure killing fighters and civilians, traumatizing the population to maintain control. It didn't end in 2014, but continued intermittently up through 2023. If Hamas did this to Israeli cities, we'd call it terrorism. So why not when Israel does it? This is not defense. It's state sponsored terrorism. Now let's look at October 7th, 2023. But as important as that day and what happened after R. It's also important to remember Benjamin Netanyahu's situation in the months before. In the summer, in fall of 2023, Netanyahu was facing the worst crisis of his political career. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting in the streets against his attempt to weaken the judiciary. Military reservists, including elite unit members were refusing to serve, saying they wouldn't defend a country abandoning democratic principles. Netanyahu was on trial for corruption charges, bribery, fraud, breach of trust. The country was more divided than ever. His approval ratings were collapsing. And then came October 7th. In the months before the attack warnings were mounting. Egyptian intelligence warned Israel days before October 7th that something big was coming from Gaza. The IDF had obtained multiple versions of Hamas' attack plan called Walls of Jericho, showing simultaneous raids on Israeli communities. But as Israeli journalists, Amos Harrell documents in Haaretz, Netanyahu, who had spent years dismissing Hamas, he called their leaders those two clowns. But Netanyahu didn't just ignore warnings. He actively created the conditions that made October 7th possible as documented in Israeli media. Netanyahu enthusiastically supported transferring money from Qatar to Hamas for years suitcases of cash. His policy was to separate the West Bank and Gaza, and that included nurturing Hamas to erode the Palestinian authority standing. The goal was clear. Keep Palestinians divided. Prevent a unified partner. Use Hamas as an excuse to avoid negotiations. It worked until October 7th. According to Haaretz reporting, Netanyahu was woken up at 6:29 AM On October 7th, he arrived at defense headquarters at 8:00 AM. His first documented orders came at 9:45 AM as Harell asks, what did he do until then? By the time he took part in discussion, many Israelis had already been murdered. After the attack. Israel systematically lied about what happened. 40 beheaded babies never happened. Israeli officials later admitted it. Babies burned in ovens fabricated. Sexual violence. Some of the most viral claims were false or unverified, and they spread fast. At the same time, UN investigators have said there are reasonable grounds to believe sexual violence occurred on October 7th. The propaganda problem is how specific shaky stories got laundered into blanket certainty and then weaponized to justify anything that followed. These claims were used to justify the Gaza assault repeated by President Biden and media worldwide. Meanwhile, crucial facts were suppressed the Hannibal Directive and Israeli military protocol to prevent hostage taking by any means necessary, even if it endangers the hostages themselves. According to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry. The Hannibal directive was invoked in several locations on October 7th, and at least 14 Israelis were likely intentionally killed by the Israeli army to prevent them from being captured. Haaretz investigation documented Israeli tank fire and helicopter strikes and locations where Israeli civilians were present, but noted, the full count remains incomplete because evidence is unavailable. And of the roughly 1200 killed on October 7th. About 370 of them were soldiers. I want to be clear, I am not trying to minimize what happened on October 7th. It was horrific. Hamas killed civilians. That is undeniable. The problem is that Israel systematically lied about what happened. Inventing atrocities suppressing evidence of their own role to manufacture consent for genocide. After October 7th, everything changed for Netanyahu. The protest stopped. The reservist rushed to defend the country. The corruption trial faded from the headlines. Netanyahu went from being the most unpopular prime minister in Israeli history to a wartime leader who couldn't be challenged, and he used that moment to launch the destruction of Gaza. Over the past two years, Haaretz has consistently reported that Netanyahu needs this war to continue to maintain his political position and to prevent a full inquiry into how October 7th could have happened. Then in February, 2026, Netanyahu released the document supposedly responding to investigations in October 7th. It was full of cherry picked quotes designed to shift all blame to defense officials while taking credit for any successes. Haaretz called in an attempt to thicken the fog rather than clear it, noting zero personal acceptance of responsibility for a massacre that happened on his watch. After policies he championed. Against warnings he ignored. So let's review what we've seen over the past nearly 80 years. 1948. Plan Dalet, systematic ethnic cleansing, not defense. 1967, A war to acquire territory not gained in 1948. Pre-planned and supported by the Americans. 1967 USS, Liberty, Israel Kills 34 Americans No consequences. 1975 Kissinger gives Israel veto over US peace initiatives. 1979, Israel kills Abu Hassan for talking to the us. 1980 Israel tries to kill the US Ambassador to Lebanon for continuing those talks. 1982, Sabra Shatila massacre, Israeli sanctions slaughter of over 1300 Palestinian refugees. The man most responsible becomes Prime Minister of Israel. 19 years later. 1985. Jonathan Pollard caught spying for Israel. 2008 to 2023. Mowing the grass policy. Intentional disproportionate force casualty ratio, nearly 150 to 1. 2023 Netanyahu ignored warnings. Created conditions used October 7th to justify genocide. 2026. Israel attacking un peacekeepers monitoring a ceasefire. So why does this pattern persist? 11 minutes after Israel declared independence, America recognized it and has backed it unconditionally ever since. That backing has multiple reasons. Strategic. The British Empire spent the 19th and early 20th century dismantling the Ottoman Empire and ensuring no unified Arab or Muslim power could replace it. Israel fit perfectly into that strategy, a western aligned state preventing regional unity. When the United States inherited Britain's role after World War ii, it inherited this logic. Israel became America's regional enforcer. Religious for a significant portion of American evangelicals. Support for Israel isn't just strategic, it's theological. Christian Zionism teaches that Jews must control Biblical Israel as a precondition for the second coming, guilt European and American guilt for not doing more to prevent the Holocaust, and preventing Jews from fleeing danger through harsh immigration laws before the Holocaust ever occurred. The result. America doesn't just support Israel. It enables Israel, unconditional military aid, diplomatic protection, billions of dollars in aid, and the freedom to act as they please. So where does all of this leave us? It's clear that Israel's defensive wars have always been a cover for planned territorial expansion. That they have never pursued peace with the Palestinians in good faith, consistently weakening or eliminating anybody who could effectively negotiate with them. And that they have never valued Palestinian civilian lives killing over 3,800 civilians between 2008 and 2014 alone and enshrining intentional disproportionate force as official military doctrine. That's not defense. That's domination. In the next episode, I'll look at the myth of Israeli democracy, how you can't claim to be democracy while denying millions living under your control the basic rights of citizenship. How the theft of land from native inhabitants is not random settler violence, but state policy. How the Nakba never stopped. It's the operating system. And how recently an Israeli minister said explicitly, "we will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state." Thank you for listening to this episode. If you found an informative, please consider subscribing, leaving a review and sharing with a friend. Until next time, stay curious, stay critical, and stay connected.