Everyone should be happy that the Israeli War in Gaza is over. I am. I am most happy that the surviving captors were returned alive to their families, and that is something we must all rejoice over.
But, we cannot forget those that died. Not just the hostages, but the casualties from the viscious and seemingly forgotten attack by Khamas on Yom Kippur, 2023 [Oct 7] that killed 1,200 Israelis.
People seem to forget that. They think that Netanyahu’s response was too harsh. Have they put the Yom Kippur attack into perspective for themselves? Do they forget that it was unprovoked, on the most holy day of Jewish worship?
If we were to look at the numbers, considering that same attack on American soil on innocent American men, women, and children, if it were to have happened here, it would be the equivalent of killing 40,000 innocent Americans.
Forty. Thousand.
There were 5,431 injured Israelies. That would have been 183,785 injured Americans. The total for America would have been close to a quarter of a million: 224,214 total casualties on one day.
Since 10/7/23, the casualties of Israel have been staggering. 12,000 Israelies have been killed or wounded. That’s a total of closer to half a million Americans, if it were our war: 406,080.
And we want “Bibi” to be ‘forgiving’, to be ‘cautious’?
First of all, he was. Yes, there have been far more injuries and deaths to Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank since the attack on Israel. But, people seem to forget that Khamas went on the offensive first, and provoked the war by killing 1,200 Israelis in one day. Look at the numbers above again.
We do not live in Israel. Bibi Netanyahu is the son of a Jewish Zionist leader, who was all too familiar with anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. His mother had forty relatives who were murdered by Nazis in Poland. Netanyahu’s father-in-law was a Holocaust survivor who lost all of his siblings and his parents in the Holocaust. He is purported to have grieved his whole life over the loss of his twin sister.
When Israel gets attacked, people on our side of the world view it only through a lens of modern politics. People in Israel view it from a lens of another threat of complete annihilation. They remember. They remember how the rest of the world sat and watched, and ignored their pleas for help, and mocked them and accused them of ‘overreacting.’ Just like people today are doing.
People here in America forget that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian”. The “Philistines” were destroyed and forgotten long ago. Rome renamed “Judah”, the Roman and accepted name for the land of Israel in the first century, to ” Syria Palestine” in the second century. Most Jews had been driven out, but there was still a strong Jewish presence in the Holy Land, long before Mohammed existed. After 324, it was called Palestine 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, where each number was a region of former Judah.
From about 638 in the muslim takeover, all the way to 1099, it was called “Jund Filastin”, the ‘military district of Palestine’, and not a ‘country’. During the Crusades period, it was called “The Kingdom of Jerusalem” from 1099 to 1291. After that, the Mamluk period called it Filastin again, an ‘administrative area’, though it remained a very informal term, and not the name of a country or a people.
The Ottoman period changed its name altogether: “Eyalet/Sanjak of Jerusalem, Damascus Eyalet.” Europeans called it at the time “Terra Sancta”, or “Holy Land.”
When the British took over, they dubbed it then “Palestine”; that was the name of what is now modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
During all that time, there was never a group of Arabs or non-Jewish or non-European people who claimed to ‘be’ “Palestinian”. Not once in history.
That did not happen until the PLO in the late 1960s, after Israel became a nation and fought several wars with its Arab neighbors. The “Palestine Liberation Organization” was formed in 1964 to advocate for a Palestinian state. They already had one in “Jordan”, which was the original state given to the Arabs when Israel first became a nation. Before then, there was no specific group of people identifying as “Palestinian” ethnically, racially, or politically. People in the region identified as Arabs and Muslims, or Arab Christians, or by where they lived, “Gazans,” “Nablusis”, leaving “Palestinian” as merely a geographic reference.
Yassir Arafat was the head of the PLO. He was born in Egypt and founded the activist group called Fatah. He became the ‘chairman’ of the PLO and focused its efforts on an armed struggle for ‘liberation’, operating in Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. It was only then that a ‘unified national idenity’ was promoted. In their official charter in 1968 they declared their purpose to be the destruction of the state of Israel.
They are the ones who attacked Jews in Munich during the Olympics. They began the practice of twisting the news and accusing Israel of genocide after Lebanese militias massacred people in Sabra and Shatila. Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982 because of Palestinian efforts from there during Lebanon’s own civil war. Arafat used the situation to fuel the message of ‘Israel’s genocide’, when what Israel was doing was responding to their attacks. That has been the model, just like Democrats at home and communists abroad: commit the atrocity but accuse your opponent of it. The ongoing phenomenon is that people tend to believe the lie.
During the 1980s-90s, Arafat tried to appear more diplomatic. He renounced terrorism, after nearly twenty-five years of promoting it and committing it against Israel, something he was rather proud of. He met with Israel at the “Oslo Accords”, after which the “Palestinian Authority” was created, giving Arabs limited self rule in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. Fatah was in control of those regions at that time.
Meanwhile, “Khamas” was formed in the Muslim Brotherhood during the “First Intifada”, as an alternative to the PLO. Their charter called for the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state, and it was rooted in nationalism and jihad, rejecting the PLO’s secularism and diplomacy.
The Second Intifada caused a power shift. Khamas started suicide bombings in Israel, won elections in the Gaza strip, taking control of the region from Fatah and the PA, causing a political split of Arabs in Gaza versus those in Judea and Samaria where Fatah retained control.
Gaza under Israel was peaceful, prosperous, and flourishing. Under Fatah and Khamas, especially the latter, Gaza deteriorated. The reason: Khamas put all its resources, billions in aid from the US and Muslim nations, into creating an infrastructure of subterranean weapons sites, carving tunnels for the express purpose of hiding troops and weapons, and launching surprise attacks on southern/western Israel. This is the reason that today’s war is not so prevalent in Judea and Samaria as it is in Gaza. Khamas is utterly Islamist, whereas Fatah/PLO methods are secular. Khamas is more corrupt, and maintains a persistent anti-Israel position.
Throughout Israel’s modern history, the rhetoric from Arabs in the region has been vitriolic. Bibi has lived through it all, and heard it all his life, and fought in wars and suffered all the attacks of the various organizations, losing loved ones and watching Jews die simply because they were Jews in the wrong place at the wrong time, because there were Arabs there who wanted them dead.
It is the Arabs who are bent on genocide. They have been spouting that rhetoric for a hundred years. The Islamist mind is following the Qoran and doing exactly what it says, ‘kill the infidel’.
During the 1920s to the 40s, it was Al Husseini leading the Arabs in British Palestine who collaborated with Nazi Germany, saying, “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them! This pleases Allah, history, and religion. This saves your honor. Allah is with you.” Berlin broadcast the message as well, and Husseini met with Hitler, showing solidarity with Nazis.
During the war of 1948, right after Israel gained independence from Great Britain, the Arab League’s Secretary General, Abdul Azzam Pasha, stated “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolain massacres and the Crusades,” and the rhetoric of genocide has been echoed against Israel ever since.
Yassir Arafat echoed the call:
“Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.”
“We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel.” ~1980
“We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion.” ~1996
All of these sentiments are reflected in the very charter that established Arafat’s PLO. They were bent on exterminating Jews and destroying the nation of Israel. They have never wanted peace.
Khamas‘s ascension in Gaza picked up the torch:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” ~ 1988 Charter, Article 7 of Khamas [Hamas].
“With their [Jews] money, they took control of the world media… They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution… They stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein.” ~ Article 22, blaming Jews for all the world’s woes, justifying their intifada and their Article 7.
Makhmoud Akhmadinejad sang the song for years, Iranian leader who supported Khamas and Khezbolah finanicially and politically:
“This regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” ~2005
“Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be eliminated.” ~ 2012
Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah Leader)
“If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” ~2002
Suffice it to say, there is ample evidence of Arabs who run these “Palestinian” organizations, or support them, expressing publicly that they want to destroy the Jewish people: that, my friends, is the genocidal threat of the Middle East. Israel has never once claimed to want to destroy “Palestinians” from off the face of the earth. In fact, the overwhelming evidence is that they have worked with and tried to spare lives of innocent Gazan Arabs, since the very beginning of their attacks on Israel.
1948 Declaration of Independence: Israel’s founding document invites Arab residents to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship.” It emphasizes coexistence, not elimination.
Oslo Accords (1993–1995): Israel, under Yitzhak Rabin, signed agreements with the PLO, recognizing Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. This is acquiesence to a “Palestinian national identity” and aims for a two-state solution. It counters the idea of an Israeli desire for genocide of any Arabs.
Official Statements (2023–2025): Post-October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders consistently state their target is Khamas, not Palestinians. Netanyahu’s October 7, 2023, speech declared war on “Khamas terrorists” for their attack (1,195 Israeli deaths), urging Gazans to “leave now” to avoid harm. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s October 9, 2023, statement about a “complete siege” on Gaza sparked controversy, but he clarified the enemy as “human animals” (Khamas), not all Palestinians.
UN Submissions: Israel’s reports to the UN (2024 ICJ defense against genocide charges) emphasize targeting “Khamas and other terrorist organizations” while denying intent to destroy Palestinians as a group, citing compliance with international humanitarian law.
In an effort to save lives amidst the fighting, Israel sent warnings and evacuation notices:
Leaflets and Calls (2008–2025): During operations (e.g., Cast Lead, Protective Edge, 2023–2025 Gaza War), the IDF drops leaflets, sends SMS, and uses phone calls to warn Gazan civilians to evacuate targeted areas. In October 2023, Israel issued evacuation orders for northern Gaza, urging 1.1 million residents to move south ahead of ground operations against Khamas. The IDF’s “knock on the roof” tactic (warning strikes with non-lethal munitions) has been used since 2009 to signal civilians to flee.
Humanitarian Corridors: In 2023–2024, Israel opened temporary corridors (e.g., Salah al-Din Road) for civilians to move to southern Gaza.
Coordination with Aid Organizations: COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories): Since the 1990s, Israel’s COGAT unit liaises with UN agencies (e.g., UNRWA, OCHA) to facilitate aid delivery to Gaza. After October of 2023, Israel allowed ~1.2 million tons of aid (food, medical supplies) into Gaza by September 2025.
Medical Evacuations: Israel has permitted thousands of Gazans to receive treatment in Israeli or third-country hospitals. For example, in 2024, ~2,000 Gazan patients were treated in Israel or Jordan for war-related injuries.
Targeted Operations:
Precision Strikes: The IDF uses precision-guided munitions to target Khamas infrastructure (e.g., tunnels, rocket launchers), aiming to reduce collateral damage. A 2024 IDF report claims 60% of strikes in Gaza used precision weapons, though civilian deaths remain high due to Khamas’s embedding in urban areas.
Rules of Engagement: IDF protocols require proportionality and distinction under international law.
Historical Cooperation:
Pre-Khamas Gaza (1967–2005): During Israel’s occupation of Gaza, it built infrastructure (e.g., hospitals, schools) and employed thousands of Gazans in Israel. Before the 2005 disengagement, ~50,000 Gazans worked daily in Israel, indicating economic integration. They flourished as Arabs in Israel.
Post-2005: Even after Khamas’s 2007 takeover, Israel maintained electricity and water supplies to Gaza, covering ~60% of Gaza’s power needs until 2023, despite frequent rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. Our friends had to take shelter from those rockets in the Negev.
It has already been mentioned that Khamas embeds its people among civilians in order to distort reality. In 2021, Yahya Sinwar, the Khamas leader, admitted to putting his military headquarters in residential buildings. Zahdy Shahin was captured in 2024, and he described fighters hiding among civilians in a hospital under IDF advances, using them as shields. They launched rockets at Jews from the tops of hospitals and schools built by Israelis for Gazans.
Nato and the UN have confirmed over and over those tactics. Khamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri (2014) called on civilians to stay in targeted areas on Al-Aqsa TV, calling it ‘resistance’. After Israel strikes back at rockets/attacks, Khamas attributes all deaths to Israel, ignoring its role (e.g., 2023 Al-Ahli Hospital blast from misfired rocket, blamed on Israel).
I wish I had time to detail the propaganda machine of western journalism, singing the ballad of Palestinians over and over again. The media have faked injured Gazans over and over again to try to paint Israel in a bad light.
Khamas’s Gaza Health Ministry (MoH) inflates casualty figures (deaths/injuries) for propaganda, blending combatants with civilians, including natural deaths, and excluding its fighters. Total claims: ~70,200 deaths/~180,000 injuries by Oct 2025, but analyses show manipulation. Key proofs:
Statistical Anomalies: Wharton statistician Abraham Wyner (2024 Tablet analysis) found MoH data (Oct–Nov 2023) defies natural variation—e.g., daily increases perfectly linear, impossible for war casualties; 70% women/children claim (vs. 25% adult males in population) hides ~4,000+ uncounted fighters. 2025 Henry Jackson Society report: Includes ~5,000 annual natural deaths (e.g., cancer patients listed post-mortem) and misfired rockets (e.g., 100s from Al-Ahli).
List Revisions/Omissions: MoH “confirmed” lists (Aug/Oct 2024) dropped thousands of names by March 2025, suggesting fabrication; excludes ~17–20K Khamas fighters killed (IDF est.). JCPA (2025): ~8,160 natural deaths (Oct 2023–Apr 2025) padded totals; no distinction for errant Khamas rockets.
Historical Precedent: In 2014/2021 wars, MoH hid combatants (buried en masse without records) and staged funerals; Biden (2023) called figures unreliable. Lancet (2025) peer-review: True traumatic deaths ~64K (Oct 2023–Jun 2024), but MoH undercounts by 40% early on due to collapsed systems—yet overcounts overall via padding.
Media Amplification: UN OCHA/BBC/Reuters often cite MoH without caveats (e.g., “52K killed” in 2025 reports), despite knowing the source is Khamas-run. Fake videos (e.g., 2013 Egypt bodies as Gaza casualties) spread via social media.
The short of it is this: Bibi knows the whole world is against him and Israel. He knows that Gazan Arabs want Israel gone, and they made a serious attempt at that on October 7, 2023, such that if that had happened to America, we’d still be angry. But, it is so very easy for the likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and others to lay all the guilt at Bibi’s feet, and claim that Israel is trying to annihilate “Palestinians” as a race, or using too much force to repsond to their killing a huge portion of their tiny population. It’s disgusting, and misguided thinking.
The Israeli-Gaza conflict, sparked by the brutal Khamas attack on October 7, 2023, cannot be viewed in isolation. The staggering loss of 1,200 Israeli lives—equivalent to 40,000 American deaths in a single day—demands context. Khamas’s unprovoked assault on Yom Kippur, a sacred day, was a calculated act of terror, rooted in a century-long history of genocidal rhetoric from Arab leaders and groups like the PLO, Khamas, and Khezbolah, who openly call for Israel’s destruction. Netanyahu’s response, while criticized as excessive by some, reflects Israel’s existential reality: a nation surrounded by enemies, haunted by the Holocaust’s shadow, and facing relentless attacks. The absence of a historical “Palestinian” identity, coupled with Khamas’s tactics—embedding fighters among civilians, inflating casualty figures, and manipulating global media—distorts the narrative. Israel’s efforts, from precision strikes to humanitarian aid, show a commitment to targeting terrorists, not civilians, despite Khamas’s human shield strategy. To accuse Israel of genocide while ignoring Khamas’s explicit intent to annihilate Jews is not just a double standard—it’s a dangerous erasure of history and truth. Peace requires acknowledging these realities, not perpetuating distorted narratives that fuel further violence.