The Israeli Occupation of Palestine

The 12^th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world
Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism
Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity
The Zionists say, in effect, ‘Look here, God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don’t, we’ll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back’
This, of course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there
Rabbi Hirsch of Jerusalem

The problem with the Israeli occupation of Palestine is that few people in the West know the truth about it—neither the history of its foundation nor the current state of affairs. Instead their opinions have been shaped by Zionist propaganda, leaving them with a twisted view of the situation.

There is a minority in the West who are aware of the true nature of the occupation of Palestine, and they are trying to do something about it. Few seem to have examined the Zionist’s religious claim to Palestine though. This is a shame, because if they did, then I think they would have realised that the claim is no longer valid, and it hasn’t been since the crucifixion of Jesus. This might seem irrelevant to people of a secular nature, and that it’s the legal and moral claims that count, but to a religious person a religious claim trumps the legal and moral ones. To explain why I think the Zionist’s religious claim to Palestinian lands is no longer valid I will start with a brief review of the history of the Hebrews and the Jews.

This is what Jehovah has said:
“Where, then, is the divorce certificate of the mother of you people, whom I sent away? And to which one of my creditors have I sold you people?
Look! It is because of your own errors you have been sold, and because of your own transgressions your mother has been sent away”
Isaiah 50:1

Archaeologic evidence shows that a Canaanite civilization developed in what is today Israel and Palestine during the Early Bronze Age, which was well established by 2000 BCE.¹

According to Old Testament narratives the Hebrews, led by Moses, escaped from slavery in Egypt sometime around 1800 BCE. During their travels in the Middle East Jehovah spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and He offered the Hebrews a deal. The deal was that if they made Jehovah their main God and obeyed His commandments, He would make them his Chosen People and lead them to a promised land where they would be well provided for. They accepted the deal, and Yehovah settled them in the lands of the Canaanites.²

According to Old Testament accounts the occupation of Canaan was violent and genocidal, but this does not appear to be the case. Archaeological studies show there was an assimilation of cultures and beliefs between the Hebrews and the Canaanites, and genetic studies show that they interbred, so it was more of a merger than a massacre.³

Sometime around 1000 BCE the Hebrews decided they wanted a king to rule over them instead of the Council of Elders. The prophet Samuel warned the Hebrews that Jehovah would not be happy about this because government by a nominated council was part of their covenant, and He would view this as a rejection of Him as their king and judge, but they still wanted a king, so they got King Saul from the tribe of Benjamin. He turned out to be a bit of a prat, and was replaced by King David from the tribe of Judah.⁴

The second rejection of their Gods was that of Jehovah’s wife in the sixth century BCE. Not all of the Hebrews rejected their Mother though. In the late 800s BCE ten of the twelve Hebrew tribes broke from the Davidic dynasty and established the Kingdom of Israel to the north, and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin established the smaller Kingdom of Judah in the south. It was King Josiah of Judah who rejected Jehovah’s wife some 300 years later when he banned Goddess worship.⁵

A few years after Josiah implemented his reforms Pharaoh Neco II of Egypt led a sizable army close to Josiah’s lands. Neco was travelling to assist the Assyrians in their fight against the Medes and the Babylonians, and did not want to fight the Jews. He informed Josiah of this but Josiah attacked the Egyptians anyway. The attack, at Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley, was a disaster, and Josiah was killed in the battle.⁶

The death of Josiah left the Jews in a state of disarray, and seeing that they were vulnerable the Chaldeans invaded Judah, ransacked the country, and took the survivors back to Babylon as slaves. The Jews then spent the next seventy years in exile, and were subjected to a long period of general misfortune which, when added to the death of Josiah, shows that Jehovah was not happy about the rejection of His wife.⁷

Despite the rejection of their mother Jehovah did not cancel his covenant with the Jews, and after their exile they were allowed to return to the Holy Lands. The Jews third rejection of Jehovah was the final straw though. This was their rejection of Jesus, and there is no doubt that Jehovah cancelled his covenant with the Jews after this because they were permanently ejected from the Holy Lands. Or at least it would have been permanent if not for Britain’s betrayal of the Palestinians.

If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second
Because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people
David Ben-Gurion
First Prime Minister of Israel

The lack of religious justification for the establishment of Israel is really just a side issue, and frankly not all that relevant today. The creation of Israel in 1948 was immoral, unethical, and an act of cowardice. It was a betrayal of the Palestinians, who made a pact with the British during the first world war to aid them in their fight against the Turks (who had allied with the Germans in 1914). It was a blatant abuse of the UN’s principle of self-determination, and the UN developed the partition plan. And it was a capitulation to terrorism.

The Turks had been mostly victorious against the British during the first two years of World War I, so the British promised the Arabs their independence if they took up arms against their Turkish overlords. The Arab revolt turned the tide, and the Turks were defeated by the end of the war in 1918.

The offer of independence was made by Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, in an exchange of letters with Husayn bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, from July 1915 to January 1916. The British never intended to honour the agreement though, as is apparent from the Balfour Declaration of November 1917.⁸

During the British mandate in Palestine, which ran from the end of WWI in 1918 until 1948, Zionist groups pushed hard to get Jewish immigrants to move to Palestine. Although slow going at first, the persecution of Jews during WWII boosted their numbers, and when the UN Partition Plan was implemented Jews made up nearly a third of the population Palestine.

With some fairly impressive gerrymandering the partition plan allocated 56% of Palestine to the Jews, despite the fact that they made up only 32% of the population and owned less than 7% of the land. Jewish territory included two thirds of the Mediterranean coastline, most of the fertile lowland plains, and sole access to the Sea of Galilee. The Arabs got just 43% of the land, much of it desert, with Jerusalem being neutral territory.⁹

It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country
The Zionist enterprise so far has been fine and good and has done what it could do with ‘land buying’—but this will not bring about the State of Israel
That must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation, and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer them all
We must not leave a single village, not a single tribe
Joseph Weitz
Director of the Jewish National Land Fund
December 19, 1940

Despite the generous terms of the partition the Jews invaded the lands allocated to the Arabs as soon as the British left and expanded their territory, leaving the Arabs with a little over 20% of Palestine. The Jews didn’t stop there, and have been steadily taking more land ever since. Palestinians refer to this loss of their lands as the Nakba, which means catastrophe.⁹

Israel claims that the 1948 war began with the invasion of Israel by the Arab armies after the British left. Many western historians still maintain that the fiction that the Arab armies invaded Israel. This is bullshit. The Arabs came to the aid of the Palestinians when the British left because the Israelis were slaughtering them.¹⁰

On April 9, 1948, five weeks before the British mandate expired, the Zionist terrorist groups the Irgun and the Lehi attacked the village of Deir Yassin. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including many women and children. The attack was particularly shocking because the villagers had signed a peace pact with their Jewish neighbours. This was just one of many attacks carried out by the Zionists before the end of the British mandate on May 14. They also attacked Palestinians in the cities of Tiberius on April 19, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, and Safad on May 10. The attacks led to some 250,000-300,000 Palestinians fleeing their homes, many taking refuge across the borders in the countries that then ‘invaded’ Palestine.¹¹

These attacks were not unprecedented. The Irgun and the Lehi had been perpetrating acts of terrorism against the British and the Palestinians for more than a decade before the war.¹²

King Abdullah of Jordan, head of the Arab military forces, had promised the British and the Israelis that they would avoid fighting with Jewish settlements, and would only secure land given to the Palestinians under the partition plan. True to his word, the fighting occurred almost exclusively on Palestinian territory.¹³

While the Arab forces included fighters from five different nations, the Zionist and Arab forces were initially evenly matched in numbers, having around 20,000-25,000 fighters each. This was at the start of the war; by the end of 1948, due to an immigration rate of around 10,000 people per month, the Zionist had 88,000 fighters, including 60,000 combat soldiers.¹⁴

In September 1948 the Israeli government were forced to take action against the Irgun and the Lehi after the assassinations of Lord Moyne and Folke Bernadotte. Bernadotte was a UN Envoy for Peace and had negotiated a truce in the war. The government dissolved the Irgun and the Lehi, and its members were then absorbed into the Israel Defence Forces.

Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun, entered politics, and in November 1948 he visited the US. During the visit a letter was published denouncing his Herut party and describing it as similar in its methods, philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi party. The letter was signed by many prominent Jews, including Albert Einstein. Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1977.¹⁵

During the 1948 war 700,000 Palestinians, over half of the Arab population of Palestine, fled to neighbouring countries. A further 46,000 to 156,000 were internally displaced, meaning they were still in what was now Israel but not able to return to their homes. Within three years of the war 700,000 Jews had migrated to Israel, replacing the Palestinians who had been forced out.¹⁶

On December 11, 1948, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 194, which called for Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, but Israel ignored the order. Some Palestinians tried to return after the war, but few made it, and from 1949 to 1956 between 2,700 and 5,000 Palestinians were killed trying to get back home. Most were unarmed and returning for economic and social reasons.¹⁷

No national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian
Edward Saïd

Palestinians living in Israel today are subjected to an apartheid legal system that includes around 50 laws that discriminate against non-Jews. These laws allow for the confiscation of privately owned land; the effective prohibition on building or living in many areas; the denial of the right to access land, services, and resources, including water; denial of residency rights; and severe restrictions on the freedom of movement.¹⁸

Israelis routinely hold hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention, where they can be held without charge or trial for periods that can be, and often are, extended for years. After the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, the number increased dramatically. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in March 2024, 3,615 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, and in December 2025 it was 3,329.¹⁹

Israel has established more than 280 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians are barred from entering these settlements, except for labourers with a work permit.²⁰

Under to Article 7 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Israel is committing of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.²¹

Prior to the October 2023 attacks Israel effectively held Gaza in a state of siege, controlling its territorial waters and airspace, and blocking the building of an airport or a seaport. Israel severely restricted the movement of people and goods across its border with Gaza. Despite recognition of Gaza and the West Bank as a single territory, Israel maintained a policy of separation between the two. Israeli authorities routinely denied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the freedom to move between the two territories to live with, or even visit, family, including spouses.

Israel constructed a wall around Gaza from 1994 to 1996, and imposed a 100 metre ‘no-go’ zone on the Gazan side of the border, where they shot anyone who entered it. In 2018 and 2019 Gazans held weekly demonstrations in protest. According to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli soldiers killed 214 demonstrators, many of whom were more than 100 meters away, and injured more than 8,000 others, including 156 whose limbs had to be amputated. The victims included children and disabled persons, healthcare workers and journalists.²²

Why should the Arabs make peace?
If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel
That is natural: we have taken their country
Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not their God
We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them?
There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault?
They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country
Why should they accept that?
David Ben-Gurion
First Prime Minister of Israel

A November 2021 Human Rights Watch report called on Israel to dismantle all forms of systematic oppression that confer privileges to Jews that are denied to Palestinians, and provide Palestinians with the same rights that it grants Israeli citizens. The report placed particular emphasis on policies relating to citizenship and residency rights, civil rights, freedom of movement, allocation of land and resources, access to services like water and electricity, and granting of building permits. And it appealed to Israeli authorities to stop building settlements and dismantle existing ones in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.²³

The report called on the international community to condemn Israel’s practices of apartheid and persecution; to vet all agreements and trade deals with Israel to screen for those directly contributing to the crimes of apartheid and persecution; and condition arms sales to Israel on them taking concrete and verifiable steps towards ending these crimes.

And finally, the report requested that countries impose individual sanctions against the persons responsible for the continuation of these crimes, and for the International Criminal Court to investigate those implicated in crimes against humanity.

None of these actions were taken, and Israel was allowed to continue as an apartheid state, to break the Geneva Convention in the occupied territories, and commit war crimes in Gaza. We should not be surprised, then, that they have escalated to genocide.

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French
What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct
I am not defending the Arab excesses
I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country
But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds
Mahatma Gandhi

Endnote

If you think the Jewish people deserve a homeland to call their own because all people do, consider this. There are 650 ethnic groups in the world, and at least 3,800 distinct cultures, spread among less than 200 countries. If we tried to give all of them their own nation it would be chaos, and possibly lead to a very disorganised World War Three.

The fact is the Zionists had a homeland before they moved to Palestine, it just wasn’t exclusively theirs. I was born in England of Anglo-Saxon descent. The Angles and the Saxons were Germanic tribes who inhabited what is now parts of Germany and Denmark. If several hundred thousand of us decided to go back there and ‘reclaim’ our lands do you think the locals would like it?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan 
2. Exodus Chapters 19-24, Deuteronomy. – Mosaic covenant.
3. Deuteronomy 20:16-18; Agranat-Tamir, L. et al ‘The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant.’ Cell. 181 (5), May 28, 2020, p. 1146–1157.e11; https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/dna-vs-the-bible-israelites-did-not-wipe-out-the-canaanites/ – Genocidal occupation not true; Canaanites live on in Jews and Arabs.
4. 1Sam. 8:4-22; 12:14-25.
5. Finkelstein, I. Silberman, N. A. ‘The Bible unearthed : archaeology’s new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its stories’ 1st Touchstone ed, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001; Finkelstein, I. (2020). ‘Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem’, in Krause, J. J. Sergi, O. and Weingart K. (eds.) ‘Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives’ SBL Press, Atlanta, GA, p. 48, footnote 57.
6. 2Chronicles 35:20-27. Funk and Wagnall’s ‘New Encyclopaedia’ Rand McNally, 1979, vol. 23, p. 33.
7. 2Chronicles 36:1-23.
8. Kedouri, E. ‘In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations 1914-1939’ Routledge, 2014, p. 3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
9. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine  
10. McMahon, S. F. ‘The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations: Persistent Analytics and Practices, Routledge, 2010, p. 37; Walid Khalidi, ‘Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine’ Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948, Autumn, 1988, p. 19.
11. Benny Morris, B. ‘The Historiography of Deir Yassin’ The Journal of Israeli History, 2005, 24 (1): p. 79–107. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2006/march/jewish.htm; Tessler M. ‘A History of the Arab–Israeli Conflict: ‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’ London, Keesing’s Publications, 1948–1973. p. 10101.
12. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
13. Shlaim, A. ‘The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921–1951’ Columbia University Press, 1988.
14. Bregman, A. ‘Israel’s Wars: A History since 1947’ Routledge, 2002, p. 24.
15. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun – Einstein, A. Rowe, D. E. (ed.) ‘Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb’ Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 350.
16. Gelber, Y. ‘Palestine 1948. War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem’ Sussex Academic Press, 2006, p. 11. ‘Number of Palestinians (In the Palestinian Territories Occupied in 1948) for Selected Years, End Year.’ Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
17. Morris B. ‘Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War’ Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 432.
18. www.adalah.org/en/law/index
19. www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics
20. B’Tselem and Kerem Navot, ‘This Is Ours – And This, Too: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank,’ March 2021; Peace Now, https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements-watch/settlements-data/population
21. www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001.pdf P. 112.
22. ‘Israel: Apparent War Crimes in Gaza,’ Human Rights Watch news release, June 13, 2018, www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/13/israel-apparent-war-crimes-gaza; OCHA, ‘Two Years On: People Injured and Traumatized During ‘Great March of Return’ Still Struggling’ April 6, 2020. World Health Organization (WHO), ‘Situation Report: Occupied Palestinian Territory, Gaza: 01–31 August 2019,’ www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/documents/sitrep_aug_2019_v0_sh_rev_gro.pdf?ua=1.
23. www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution