The Secret Story of the First Palestinian State

21 min readMay 8, 2024

The Accusation That Israel Has Blocked Palestinians From Fulfilling Their Dream of Independence

In 1951, Israel passed a Civil Defense Law requiring every home built inside Israel to have a bomb shelter. This law is still in effect today. If your first reaction is shock, you are normal, because that is not a normal sort of law. If you are a reader living in America, Canada or western Europe, it may seem unimaginable. Why would every single home in a country need to have a bomb shelter, mandated by law? What could be so frightening?

Go deeper: The wiki on Israel’s civil defense laws and structures

The answer is, partly, Palestinians. In 1951 Israel was bordered by a Palestinian state, created in the wake of its 1948 War of Independence, and this state was large, much larger than Israel, and potentially very threatening.

In fear of its neighbors, including the first Palestinian state, Israel passed a law requiring every citizen’s home to have a bomb shelter. Over the years, these shelters have saved many lives, and these living conditions for Israelis have never abated. In 2021, I wrote to a family in Israel to check on how they were doing after I learned about a particularly intense period of rocket attacks from Gaza. Here is the reply I received,

Hi my dear Gregg, Thank you for thinking of us. We are OK. It’s crazy that we overcome covid, a worldwide thing, and we can not win the right for a quiet and safe place to live. We are lucky to have a strong smart army, now we just need the world to understand that we are fighting for a quiet, safe, everyday life. They have been bombing us every day for the last decade. Kids in the south are all traumatized and live with panic attacks on a daily basis. It’s impossible!!! And needs to end. I have slept in a shelter for the last week.

Thank God for the bomb shelters. As the world saw on October 7th, 2023, it is very unsafe to be an Israeli living near Gaza.

This chapter is the story of the time the Palestinians had a state, and why today everyone must pretend they didn’t. The Palestinian state had a western border just eleven miles from Tel Aviv, and about a million people in the West Bank of the Palestinian State were angry about losing the war they started in 1948. The people were pretty openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Violent factions, led by Amin Al-Hussayni, a man who had personally assisted Hitler in World War II, had one of his fedayeen holy warriors assassinate their own head of state for having the temerity to consider accepting the partition of land which established Israel as a state.

Go deeper: Israel’s vulnerable geographic situation

This Palestinian state continued to exist until 1967, when Israel broke it into two pieces, because the Palestinian state had escalated a long, off-and-on guerilla war it had been waging against Israel into an open war of armies.

Wait. What? You did not know about the first Palestinian state which existed from 1950 until 1967?

You are not crazy. Hardly anybody does. It is very, very, very bad manners to mention it. We must pretend the Palestinians never had a state, for the sake of getting them a new state, on pain of getting snickered at by the sophisticated people.

But I will talk about that a little later. Right now, since I am not one of the cool kids anyway, I will take you to that time. To really understand it, we actually need to start just before World War I, so we can all understand how big Palestine really was.

“Palestine” was a mainly European way of thinking about that area, and it consisted of two halves, which made it pretty big, much bigger than tiny Israel. Today, we pretend “Palestine” was just a name for the land west of the Jordan river and bordering the Mediterranean ( “From the river to the sea” ). In reality, the Jordan river bisected Palestine and it consisted of a really big chunk of land east of the river as well, not to mention territory currently in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Here’s an old map labeled “Palestine in the time of Jesus”, created in 1912 and held in the Library of Congress of the United States,

You should notice that, here, the river Jordan bisects “Palestine”. It is not the boundary. “Palestine” exists both east and west of the river. This was a normal way to depict Palestine. It was the way everyone who thought of the area when using the name “Palestine” ( i.e., Europeans but mostly not Arabs ) thought of it.

People had always thought this way because “Palestine” was just what the Romans renamed “Israel” to insult the Jews they had conquered ( by renaming it after their ancient enemies, the Philistines, who were Greeks from Crete ), and the nation of Israel existed on both sides of the river Jordan.

Go deeper: The forgotten history of the term “Palestine”

In fact, it was almost universal to refer to “West Palestine” and “East Palestine” when talking about parts of “Palestine”, as we can read in the history linked to in the Go deeper box above,

Since biblical times, Palestine was understood to span the Jordan River. It was common to call the one bank Western Palestine and the other Eastern Palestine, as evidenced by such works as Edward Robinson, et al., Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions (1856); Charles Warren, Underground Jerusalem (1876); Frederick Jones Bliss, The Development of Palestine Exploration (1906); and Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and Its Transformation (1911). The Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Menasseh, the Bible said, all held land east of the Jordan River. Before World War I, no books described that river as Palestine’s eastern boundary.
Eastern Palestine was also known as Transjordan, meaning “across the Jordan.” In other words, the Jordan River did not bound Palestine; it bisected it. Referring to the Jordan Valley in his book Sinai and Palestine (1863), the Oxford University scholar Arthur Penrhyn Stanley said, “It is around and along this deep fissure that the hills of western and eastern Palestine spring up.”
The terminology of Western and Eastern Palestine appeared universally in 19th- and early 20th-century literature. In George Adam Smith’s influential study, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, Book II is entitled “Western Palestine” and Book III “Eastern Palestine.” The famous works of Britain’s Palestine Exploration Fund — the first coauthored by H.H. Kitchener, later Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener, when he was but a lieutenant — were titled The Survey of Western Palestine and The Survey of Eastern Palestine.
No one in the pre-World War I period ever needed to specify how far eastward Eastern Palestine extended. As the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica stated, “The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins.”
When the British took over the Mandate of Palestine in 1917, after winning the territory from the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Winston Churchill in the early 1920’s simply used the alternate name for “East Palestine” as the name for the part of Palestine on the east of the Jordan River.
In February 1921, Winston Churchill became secretary of state for the colonies and responsibility for the Middle East was transferred from Curzon to him. Churchill promptly devised a set of policies of huge importance and lasting effect. … High on Churchill’s agenda was Eastern Palestine. Churchill shared Curzon’s view that an Arab administration of Transjordan could help keep down British expenditures. Churchill also agreed to maintain the ban on Zionist settlement east of the Jordan River — originally put in place by Britain’s military administration, which claimed to lack the resources necessary to protect Jews there. … In early 1921 Colonial Office officials mulled the question of terminology and proposed that “‘Palestine’ and ‘Eastern Palestine’ should be brought into use for the territories lying respectively to the west and east of the River Jordan.” Their recommendation was only partially adopted. Palestine became the term used for Western Palestine. But the territory east of the Jordan would commonly be called Transjordan.
The common use of “Transjordan” rather than “Eastern Palestine” had consequences. After the 1948–49 Israeli War of Independence, it allowed supporters of the Palestinian Arabs to describe them as “stateless.” After the 1967 Six-Day War, it allowed people to say plausibly, if inaccurately, that the Jews had taken control of all of Palestine, leaving none to the Arabs.

Churchill’s motivation was not deep or historical. It was budgetary. He just wanted to save the British Empire some money by preventing Jewish migration there and setting up an Arab governor, so he changed the names around and shrunk the borders of “Palestine”.

Here is a fish worth pulling out of the memory hole. What we today call the Kingdom of Jordan is actually Eastern Palestine. If we want to speak of “historic Palestine” and what became of it, we need to acknowledge from the start that most of Palestine still belongs to the Arabs of Palestine, and many at the time felt it was the best part of Palestine as well as the largest,

Leopold Amery, a former colonial secretary and one of the drafters of the Balfour Declaration, criticized the Transjordan policy for “taking out of Palestine the larger and better half, the half more suitable to large-scale colonization.” Years later — in a May 22, 1939 House of Commons debate — he described the decision as Palestine’s “first partition.”
Chaim Weizmann, argued to Churchill that Transjordan, from earliest times, was “an integral and vital part of Palestine.” Its plains were the Holy Land’s “natural granary” and the climate was “invigorating.”

By 1948, Eastern Palestine had become the Kingdom of Transjordan. In Israel’s 1948 War for Independence, Transjordan invaded West Palestine and took the West Bank and East Jerusalem for its own. On April 24th, 1950, the newly renamed Kingdom of Jordan formally annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem and made them part of itself. The Go deeper link below takes you to an announcement from the period.

Go deeper: Jordan incorporates the West Bank as Jordanian Territory

This wasn’t a superficial thing. King Hussein was very explicit that he was consolidating a Palestinian state, saying in the annexation resolution, “Approval is granted to complete unity between the two banks of the Jordan, the Eastern and Western, and their amalgamation in one single state: The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan, under the crown of his Hashemite Majesty King Abdullah ben el-Husein the exalted.”

It was not called “Palestine” but it was Palestine, minus a small part where the nation of Israel existed, and though King Abdullah was not Palestinian, two-thirds of the citizens were Palestinians. No country in the Middle East except Israel has ever been a democracy, so the lack of a Palestinian ruler is not per se a reason to deny Jordan became a Palestinian state upon the annexation.

Palestinians were treated as first-class citizens. All Palestinians were granted immediate citizenship with full rights. Jordan held a legislative election and granted fifty percent of the seats to the Palestinians west of the river Jordan. A large number of the rest of the legislative seats were granted to Palestinians living on the eastern side of the Jordan, meaning a super majority of the country’s legislature was effectively Palestinian controlled.

The Palestinians had achieved self-determination in Palestine.

Two years before the formal annexation, the Kingdom even convened a formal meeting called the Jericho conference, of Palestinian and non-Palestinian leaders inside Jordan. Here is how the US State Department described it in its internal diplomatic communications,

December 4, 1948.
Confidential
140. Second Palestine Arab conference held at Jericho December 1 (mytel 136 November 301) and attended by numerous delegations including mayors of Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Arab Legion Military Governor General and military governors all districts, and other notables. It is understood that organizers of meeting arranged transportation service to ensure attendance by many delegates. Audience estimated at several thousand.
While 6 resolutions were originally proposed, only 4 were adopted. According to Secretary of Conference, Ajaj Nuweihid, drafting committee still in process of completing final text of resolutions which “will go down in history”. Nuweihid said that after preamble which referred to resolutions adopted at meeting of October 1, four new resolutions contained following:
1. Palestine Arabs desire unity between Transjordan and Arab Palestine and therefore make known their wish that Arab Palestine be annexed immediately to Transjordan. They also recognize Abdullah as their King and request him proclaim himself King of new territory.
2. Palestine Arabs express gratitude to Arab states for their efforts in behalf of liberation of Palestine (Nuweihid indicated object of this was hint to Arab states that their job was done).
3. Expression of thanks to Arab states for their generous assistance and support to Palestine Arab refugees.
4. Resolve that purport of first resolution be conveyed to King at once.
Following meeting large delegation proceeded to King’s winter quarters at Shuneh to present resolution to King and request his acceptance. King replied that matter must be referred to his government and that he must also ascertain views other Arab states.

Go deeper: The State Department letter on the Jericho Conference

King Abdullah had rivals in the Arab League who had their own designs on Israel’s destruction and partitioning the land. They initially objected to the Jericho Conference resolutions, fearing it was the first step in a plan by Abdullah to take land from Israel without them. Abdullah spent the next two years assuring them he had no further territorial ambitions, they dropped their objections, and in 1950 the annexation occurred smoothly.

History should have ended there. Britain and the United States recognized the annexation, which in those days, coming off the victory in World War II and establishment of the UN in New York, under US design, was as good an imprimatur as any international move could have.

I will speak more about this later, but it is always pretended that the world did not recognize the annexation, and it is generally pretended that the United States did not. That rests on a deceit about how recognition occurs, which we can see from how the United States communicated its recognition,

In response to Mr. Rifai’s question as to when the US was going to recognize the union of Arab Palestine and Jordan, I explained the Department’s position, stating that it was not the custom of this country to issue formal statements of recognition every time a foreign country changed its territorial area. The union of Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the will of the people and the US accepted the fact that Jordanian sovereignty had been extended to the new area. Mr. Rifai said he had not realized this and that he was very pleased to learn that the US did in fact recognize the union.

Go deeper: The United States Communicates Its Recognition of Jordan’s Annexation of Arab Palestine

On December 14, 1955, Jordan was unanimously accepted into the United Nations as a full member, without objections or qualifications. This completed the international acceptance of the new Palestinian state.

At the Jericho conference, the civilian administrations of Palestinians accepted the annexation. A few years later, with the help of the Soviet Union, they organized a paramilitary administration to retake the part of the land where Israel existed. That paramilitary administration, called the Palestine Liberation Organization, also recognized the legality of Jordan’s annexation in articles 24 and 25 of its charter,

Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.
Article 25. The Organization is encharged with the movement of the Palestinian people in its struggle to liberate its homeland in all liberational, organizational, political, and financial matters, and in all other needs of the Palestine Question in the Arab and international spheres.

In other forums, PLO leadership reaffirmed this acceptance of Jordan’s ownership of the western territories. For example, Zuheir Mohsen, PLO executive committee member, was quoted in 1977 in his biography,

The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

Pause to reflect on the situation. It is important. By 1955, Jordan was a united, majority Palestinian state on both sides of the Jordan river; with equality among all citizens; peacefully recognized by all citizens; a member without territorial qualification or objection in the United Nations; openly embraced by the victors of the post-World War II order, Britain and the United States; whose territorial claims had been openly accepted by both the civilian and paramilitary aspects of Palestinian society.

If the Palestinian cause was truly about self-determination in Palestine, history should have ended, but it didn’t.

The Arabs of Palestine Used Their State For Aggressive War

History didn’t end because large factions within the Arab population were more interested in eliminating the Jewish state than making their own state work. Islamic holy warriors called fedayeen, under the leadership of the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Hussayni, performed the nascent Palestinian identity’s first significant act as citizens of Jordan. They assassinated King Abdullah on the steps of the Muslim holy site Al Aqsa, in Jerusalem, for the crime of indicating he had no further territorial designs on Israel, which would be a de facto acceptance of Israel’s existence. The Go deeper link below takes you to a contemporaneous newspaper article reporting the assassination.

Go deeper: Palestinian fedayeen assassinates Jordan’s King Abdullah

The purpose of the assassination was not to gain independence from Jordan for the Arabs of Palestine. It was just a message about the importance of destroying Israel. A fiction writer couldn’t make this stuff up if they wanted to. Winston Churchill’s office wrote,

Mr Churchill said today, after learning of the assassination: “I deeply regret the murder of this wise and faithful Arab ruler, who never deserted the cause of Britain and held out the hand of reconciliation to Israel.” The Israeli Minister in London commented: “The assassination of King Abdullah has not only deprived the people of Jordan of their monarch but constitutes a serious blow to peace and stability in the Middle East. King Abdullah was a man who worked hard for understanding and peace between Israel and Jordan and whose efforts, if successful, would have contributed much to the welfare and progress of the entire area.”

Having dramatically intimidated the Jordanian government, the fedayeen felt free to launch a years long war of terror against Israel, called the Fedayeen wars ( or sometimes, the Fedayeen raids ). From 1951–1956, fedayeen holy warriors infiltrated the border between Israel and its neighbors in the Sinai, the West Bank and Gaza. From 1951–1953, most of the infiltration came from Jordan, destroying property, stealing, and murdering Israeli civilians. Afterwards, the tilt shifted more towards Gaza. A little over 400 Israelis were killed and almost 1000 were injured during these raids.

While the terrorism never completely stopped during Jordan’s control of the West Bank, it slowed down after Israel perpetrated the Qibya massacre, one of the darkest incidents in Israel’s history, in which it murdered 69 Palestinian civilians in the village of Qibya as a tit-for-tat reprisal for a fedayeen throwing a grenade into an Israeli home and murdering the family in their sleep. It was also a warning to Jordan that it better police its borders. Jordan responded appropriately, arresting more than 1000 fedayeen and tightening the border, but at a high cost in Palestinian lives and a high moral cost for Israel.

Palestinians viewed this as a betrayal. Simply having a Palestinian state was not the goal for the Palestinians. The goal was to destroy Israel. As the US State Department wrote at the time,

As official support of terrorist operations ceased, many Palestinian Arabs became increasingly frustrated at the relative lack of aggressiveness toward Israel on the part of Arab governments. There was persistent agitation among Palestinians throughout the Arab world for some kind of representative organization, and this culminated in 1964 in the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO received the formal sanction of the League of Arab States at an Arab summit meeting that year.

Under pressure internally from these violent factional forces, and under pressure externally by the Arab League, Jordan joined the Arab League once again in an attempt to destroy Israel in 1967. This time when Israel won, it knew the danger it faced having a Palestinian state extending all the way into the West Bank and seized the West Bank to have more defensible territory, as well as to be able to respond more effectively to fedayeen and the PLO.

And that was the end of the Palestinian state. In its short life, it showed much less desire for self-determination than it showed indulging its obsessive desire to destroy Israel.

There was a short encore. After 1967, the Palestine Liberation Organization fled east of the river to set up operations. What did it do with its second chance? It started a civil war in Jordan, in an attempt to overthrow the government. This war is called Black September, and it was an attempt to topple the son of the king the fedayeen had previously assassinated, all in the service of obtaining state resources in its fight against Israel. When it failed, it was exiled to Lebanon.

Go deeper: How Jordan’s king survived Black September

Taking an Eraser To The Palestinian State

The history of Jordan’s short tenure as the Palestinian State demonstrates, with scalpel-like precision and lack of ambiguity, that the Palestinian cause is not self-determination in Palestine but rather the destruction of Israel and curing the land of its Jews. If you are trying to establish another Palestinian state, this is very embarrassing. It is so embarrassing, you really need to hide it.

It is morally hard to argue that the Palestinians are oppressed victims who deserve a state, and simply want peaceful self-determination on some bit of land of their own, because they already had a state and they squandered it on violence, intimidation and war. What can an advocate do?

The cool kids can retcon it. That is, they can pretend, Pravdalike, that history never happened that way. They do it for the sake of creating the narrative they need to have in the present, to achieve the outcome they want to have in the future, by changing what we are allowed to say about the past. If you do not play along, you do not get to be part of the club. This is what the world’s opinion leaders are doing. We can examine the many ways this plays out by examining how it presents as history to modern audiences and students, with scholarly imprimatur, something which actually is a disinformation ploy.

Historic Palestine

The masters of the retcon have introduced the romanticized term “historic Palestine” to refer to the land west of the Jordan river and east of the Mediterranean sea. It is a term meant to invoke in the mind of listeners a picture of a centuries old land and its people, nestled sweetly in an idyllic valley until disturbed by evil outside forces.

By implication, the evil Zionists are depicted as having seized all the land of this ancient imagination, leaving nothing for its historic people. As we have seen, every part of this is disinformation. “Historic Palestine” actually was the larger territory which encompassed land east and west of the river, as well as land currently part of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Almost all this land is still in Arab hands and Israel exists on a small part of it, like an indigenous people reduced to a reservation. The “historic Palestine” anti-Zionists use this phrase to refer to, actually only existed from 1921–1948, a mere 27 years, and was a British invention specifically of Winston Churchill. The anti-Zionist is obscenely substituting a colonial invention for the real thing, while claiming to be fighting colonialism.

Claiming Jordan’s Annexation Was “Never internationally recognized”

This is probably the most audacious lie in the retcon. The idea is, since countries did not come out and openly say they recognized Jordan’s annexation, that in fact Jordan’s annexation was rejected by the “international community”. This claim is everywhere. Usually, it is accompanied by some hand wavey language like, “Only Britain” or “Only Britain and Pakistan” recognized the annexation, to indicate it was some minor thing everyone else held their nose against.

This is just nonsense, but necessary nonsense for the purpose of the retcon. As we saw above, America also recognized the annexation ( which was a very, very big deal in 1950, in light of the outcome of WW II). Importantly, America explained very clearly that it ( and by implication other countries ) were not “in the business” of making formal announcements about such matters when they accepted them. Here is the American diplomatic communication again ( linked to above where it is first discussed ),

The union of Arab Palestine and Jordan had been brought about as a result of the will of the people and the US accepted the fact that Jordanian sovereignty had been extended to the new area. Mr. Rifai said he had not realized this and that he was very pleased to learn that the US did in fact recognize the union.

In historical fact, this was the view of the international community and Jordan’s annexation was legitimized. The evidence for this is Jordan’s 1955 acceptance into the United Nations, five years after the annexation, with no objections, conditions, observations or remarks at all from any member ( not even members of the Arab League ) to the need to adjust Jordan’s territorial boundaries. The vote was 55 votes to none in favor of admitting Jordan to the UN. Further evidence came from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s own charter, which explicitly recognized Jordan’s sovereignty over that land, claiming only the land Israel was sovereign over.

“Administering the West Bank” rather than “Governing It”

By retconning the international community’s views of Jordan’s annexation, many official UN websites which discuss the history of the territory can avoid mentioning Jordan ever governing the West Bank or Jerusalem. Instead, you will find that time period referred to as one in which Jordan “administered” the West Bank. As we saw above in great detail, Jordan’s annexation was mutually accepted by the Palestinians at the Jericho meeting, by the PLO in their charter, and by the United Nations via membership without objection. In these circumstances, the proper way to write about the period would be one where those areas were part of Jordan, rather than “administered” by it.

“Governing” and “administering” connote two very different things and the UN knows this. “Administering” implies holding in trust, and implies that the West Bank was always intended to be and thought of as a future independent territory. “Governing” is to acknowledge a territory has become a permanent part of the annexing country, and it settles all questions about future sovereignty unless the territory is lost in war. For example, the United States is not described as “administering” Hawaii and the Hawaii state government is not an “administrative” government. A territory can be either successfully annexed or administered, it can’t be both.

At the time, no one thought Jordan was temporarily holding those territories in trust. Everyone, including the Palestinians and the United Nations, knew Jordan had taken them to be part of its own body and did not object.

This is simply an Orwellian sort of double-speak. In its near totality of influence, it acts as a kind of subtle disinformation campaign designed to make modern people think the “Palestinian” issue is something it is not. The retcon dictates this conflict has always been a struggle against Israel for an independence in Palestine the Palestinians have always dreamt of but never had. It hides the truth that the Palestinian cause has had a chance to show its true ambition, and demonstrated their ambition to be a war of aggression to destroy Israel in an attempt to expand, using their independent state as an opportunity to pursue aggressive war.

We have seen how false the retcon is.

How schizophrenic is this? Crazily, even the Wiki on the topic of Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank has been rewritten to use this official language that it was being “administered”. By doing this, it simultaneously acknowledges and denies that the territory was successfully annexed: The Wiki on Jordan’s annexation

Go deeper: The UN Trade Office using the “administered” language

Go deeper: UN “History of Palestine” site denies Palestine ever achieved independence

We have good evidence that the Palestinian’s dream is still not a simple dream of self-determination, but a complex dream of aggression, murder and retaking. In this century alone, the Palestinians have twice had “statelets”, small experiments in autonomy which they used to launch aggression rather than pursue peaceful self-determination. The first was in 2000, which erupted into the Second Intifada.

Go deeper: Fishing the World’s Memory Hole: The Second Intifada

The second statelet was Gaza, which had a chance at independence in 2005. What followed was the election of Hamas as the government, Israel’s attempt to contain Hamas through a blockade, and more than a decade of rocket attacks against Israel, which culminated in the attack of October 7th, 2023, leading to the Gaza War.

The best way to understand how things have gone so badly is to read the chapters of this resource in order, from beginning to end, clicking on the Go deeper links as your time allows. It is an immersive experience and few people will get through unchanged, having learned the context of the conflict, including parts the United Nations does not want people to learn.

This essay is part of a larger resource for parents, teachers, students, concerned individuals, and anyone else who desires to contextualize the conflict and navigate the accusations against Israel and Palestinians.

All Chapters:

0. Foreword to Zionism and Anti-Zionism

1. The Gish Gallop of Anti-Zionism

2. Genocide or Just War?

3. For Hamas, The Suffering Is The Point

4. What Is Israel? Why So Much Violence?

5. The Hebrew People, Not the Jewish Religion

6. Chosen For Their Insignificance, Not Their Superiority

7. The Incoherence of, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionism.”

8. Refugee Immigration, Not Settler Colonialism

9. How the Zionists Saved ( Not Conquered ) Palestine

10. The 1920’s And The Spread of Hate