David May

At a bar this weekend, I spoke with a random person in their young 30s. She mentioned that she and her sister-in-law have political disagreements. I asked her which subject in particular. She said: Israel-Palestine. So, I asked which side she stands on. She said she was opposed to Israel genociding Palestinians. Trying not to give away my position, I asked: What makes you say that? She said it was Israel killing 200,000 Palestinian children. I told her that was interesting because Hamas's death toll, which includes fighters, sits at around 70,000. At that point, she made it clear that she wasn't interested in changing her opinion. We have a propaganda and misinformation problem. It seems that many people have developed strong opinions based on lies. But perhaps correct information could help dispel the lies. Though, I suspect the truth doesn't matter as much as the narrative.

Sure, there’s a lot of snark here. But the underlying point is the double standard that Israel faces. When agitators are unruly and act out, police forces respond with force. But if Israel does it, decontextualized clips cause international furor.

Two men were indicted for planning to assassinate German Jewish leaders for Iran, German prosecutors said. Ali S. and Tawab M, allegedly plotted to assassinate Central Council of Jews in Germany president Dr. Josef Schuster and German-Israeli Society chairman Volker Beck.

Of all the unforced PR disasters that Israel has had, this might be the most unforced.

I think the IDF dangerously miscalculated humanitarian aid needs into Gaza and the extent to which Hamas was able to capture the aid and deprive the population of food, thereby contributing to hunger in Gaza. There are many instances of troops being too twitchy or trigger happy. That is very different than the malice being attributed to the IDF.

@DavidSamuelMay You say in the 1st para there is plenty of room to criticize IDF’s war against Hamas, but in the 3rd you imply they did a good job under the circumstances. Don’t waffle. Israel has done a great job against Hamas, and I really don’t care that their supporters are living in tents.

Comments like this prove my point. The narrative is distorted from reality to cast Israel as a cosmic evil. Wars are violent, and that is why we should avoid them whenever possible. And there is plenty of room to criticize how Israel prosecuted the war against Hamas. But there is a vast difference between Israel killing civilians in a campaign to defeat a genocidal enemy and the accusation that Israel is massacring civilians in a genocide. For many, however, Israel's guilt is a foregone conclusion, and anyone pushing back is a genocide denier. I'll repeat: Hamas's figure of around 70k Gaza deaths INCLUDES Hamas fighters. We don't have exact numbers of killed fighters, but they are in the tens of thousands. So, in dense urban fighting, Israel achieved a remarkably low civilian-to-combatant casualty rate. Israel achieved this through advance warning, calling off strikes, and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid even when Hamas stole it, and despite the many measures Hamas took to increase civilian casualties (building tunnels underneath civilian areas, using civilian areas as command centers, not allowing civilians to flee combat zones, etc.). But many will skip past 10/7, the brutal fighting, and the human shields and claim that based on the death and destruction, the Gaza war was a genocide. There are two general camps of people who make this claim. 1. The people who actively support the resistance and see the value in advancing the claim that Israel is committing genocide. 2. The well-intentioned people who are duped by the pictures and the sad stories. The first group is beyond reach, but the second group should be reachable. Anyone given a cartoonish story of good and evil would support the side presented as innocent victims. But this camp should understand that their well-intentioned support for a people that is suffering tremendously (the Palestinians) is energizing antisemitism. Jews are being scapegoated as genocide supporters, thereby justifying attacks on them even though Israel is fighting a war against genocidal enemies. There are real consequences for the false genocide claim, but I doubt the well-intentioned people claiming that Gaza is a genocide will have the introspection to realize the damage they are causing.

Since this has gotten so much attention, if you are able, please pray for a speedy recovery for Masha bat Chaya Ita.

At a bar this weekend, I spoke with a random person in their young 30s. She mentioned that she and her sister-in-law have political disagreements. I asked her which subject in particular. She said: Israel-Palestine. So, I asked which side she stands on. She said she was opposed to Israel genociding Palestinians. Trying not to give away my position, I asked: What makes you say that? She said it was Israel killing 200,000 Palestinian children. I told her that was interesting because Hamas's death toll, which includes fighters, sits at around 70,000. At that point, she made it clear that she wasn't interested in changing her opinion. We have a propaganda and misinformation problem. It seems that many people have developed strong opinions based on lies. But perhaps correct information could help dispel the lies. Though, I suspect the truth doesn't matter as much as the narrative.

Sore Ansch-loser

Not what we had in mind when we called for more Zionist camps.

*TERP

Perhaps you missed the details. 70k is Hamas's estimate of total Palestinian deaths in Gaza, including fighters, not the number of children deaths. 70k (or 200k) dead kids is a very different scenario from an urban war in which Israel killed tens of thousands of Hamas fighters despite them hiding among civilians. Meanwhile, Israel went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, though one can disagree with their civilian-to-combatant casualty threshold for authorizing strikes on militants or other decisions Israel made. But painting brutal war thrust upon Israel as an Israeli attempt at genocide is simply wrong.

@DavidSamuelMay So 70k dead kids isn't enough for her to hold that opinion even though her #'s were wrong? Wow- how many is too many David?

The same government that took Israel to the ICJ is now saying it cannot stop coal exports because of WTO rules. So which is it? Bold enough to make global headlines, but too powerless to act economically?

Some thoughts based on the replies. 1. Not sure why people are confidently denying an event that happened to me this weekend, but yes, this was a real conversation. 2. There is a huge difference between "Israel killed 200,000 children" and "The estimate given by Hamas is around 70,000, which includes tens of thousands of Hamas fighters that Hamas doesn't separate out, and it was in tense urban fighting in which Hamas fighters dressed as, mingled with, and hid behind civilians." Any civilian death is terrible, but people die in war. In fact, most people who die in war are civilians. Opposing death is the only moral position. Making up statistics to justify a claim of genocide, thereby energizing antisemitic attacks, is wrong and dangerous.

@davidgross_man @kampeas Agreed. But you can make the same point without retweeting a hate site.

Seeing this video brings me back immediately to the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills in 1999. Who could harm children

@EliLebowicz Some useful כלים שונים?

Just like at Achashverosh’s party.

JNS, a wire service with 100-plus subscribing news publications, was told there was no room for it to cover this event.

Terrible

@bradman_eric She's misinformed on the misinformation. Broken telephone I guess.

@DavidSamuelMay Only 200,000 ?! The normal accusation is 380,000, which is actually more than the total number of children in Gaza. They must have realised that they couldn’t get away with the 380,000 !

Mamdani's tweet is propaganda, not history. It's hard to know where to begin. Perhaps by noting (again) that the "Visit Palestine" poster so beloved of Mamdani's Dismantle-Israel crowd was created by Franz Kraus, an Austrian-Jewish refugee from Hitler, in 1936. Here In Tel Aviv.

The nakba narrative is central to the Palestinian cause. But it's misleading at best. The nakba narrative suggests that 1948 was a tragedy parallel to the Holocaust. It ignores that the Arabs: - rejected partition - massacred many Jews, killing 1% of Israel's population Much like the current war, an attempt to annihilate the Jews rebounded terribly and caused incredible suffering for the Palestinians. In 1948, 2023, and all through out, human rights groups and revisionist historians erased Palestinian crimes to portray brutal wars and Israeli defensive measures as cruel attempts to exterminate and dislocate Palestinians.