A guide to Israel’s modus operandi in 22 points

1. Let’s start out with the most obvious one. The most popular weapon in Israel’s arsenal is to deflect any blame by calling you an anti-Semite. ‘You just hate Jews’ or ‘we know you love Hitler’ or some such nonsense. If you are a critic of Israel and happen to be Jewish, you receive special status: you are a self-hating Jew, meaning you wish to die and therefore don’t agree with Israel’s actions. It’s like a form of euthanasia Jewish people have available to them. Oppose Israel, and Israel’s enemies will do for you what doctors in the Netherlands, Belgium, or Switzerland would only want to do after a few years of petitioning them. Playing the ‘anti-Semite’ card is easy; it works in every situation and against everyone. Once you criticize Israel, there is no more way out for you, even for critics of Israel who are otherwise practically in love with Jewish culture. For example, if you are a Holocaust expert, they will just say you like to read about Jews being killed. If you like movies and books with Jewish characters, they will say you’re studying them in order to oppose them better. Once you criticize Israel, you cannot redeem yourself; you simply hate Jews. Ironically, nothing could be more anti-Semitic than Israel claiming to bomb other people to keep all Jews safe. This is a manipulative attempt to make all Jews complicit in Israel’s war crimes.

2. As we have all noticed, ad nauseam, somehow the events of October 7th give Israel a license to – if needs be – wipe out the entire world. The only event worse than October 7th was the Holocaust, but October 7th is a close second. And if you are a mainstream journalist, you can’t have a show without mentioning how terrible it was. That even a month after October 7th Israeli violence already completely dwarfed the events of October 7th is of no consequence, and all the horrific things Israel did to the Palestinians even in the days leading up to October 7th is never mentioned. There was a ‘ceasefire.’

3. Ceasefire in this context means: ‘Israel can kidnap, kill, steal land, and mess with Palestinians in any way you can think of, at a slow pace without the Palestinians being able to do anything back.’ A ceasefire means that Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is able to fly under the radar, and the things it does aren’t big enough to make headlines. This slow destruction of any real possibility of a Palestinian state arising has been going on for decades. That’s the real reason why Gaza couldn’t develop. The money that went into the tunnels would hardly have made a difference if it had been spent otherwise; there is only so much you can do with that money if you have a neighbor that is constantly squeezing you, slamming you with restrictions, and regularly kills some of your people. This is also why the West Bank is atomized. In terms of a Palestinian state, there is nothing to work with there. The West Bank is a group of little Palestinian islands surrounded by a sea full of hostile settlers. You will hear Israeli propagandists say that the Gazans had every chance to turn Gaza into a holiday resort. Yeah, the country that constantly screws over the Palestinians and can’t even bear the sight of Palestinian olive trees is going to let Gaza develop into one of the world’s tourist hot spots. That would be a total nightmare. Imagine Gaza full of Western tourists. No more opportunity to regularly mow the lawn there, because the West does care a little bit—not much, but a little bit—about its tourists dying abroad.

4. Any talk of a two-state solution serves to distract from what is going on. The idea is used to cover up the inevitable: that Israel wants all the land with as few Palestinians on that land as possible. Talk of a two-state solution is very convenient. It’s something that can be promised on the condition that the Palestinians finally do this or that. Israel makes it seem as though the Palestinians could have that state tomorrow if they just stop resisting, but it’s all a fata morgana. There is no longer anything to build a viable Palestinian state on; Israel has already swallowed up too much and has no intention whatsoever of giving anything back. The idea of the two-state solution is the ultimate ‘kicking the can down the road’ strategy. The Palestinians will never qualify for it because if they did, Israel would invent new conditions.

5. Maintaining a state where one religion or ethnic group has to remain the majority automatically carries the threat of violence and oppression with it. If you were to live in Wallonia, Belgium, and Belgium had as its most explicit raison d’être that Flemish people always have to be the majority, you should be scared, very scared. This is the case for Arab Israelis and for the Palestinians in the besieged areas. The West Bank and Gaza are under siege and have been for a long time.

6. Crying over a few hostages while ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians shows how the value of one human life does not equal the life of another. Every Palestinian in Gaza and in the West Bank lives the life of a hostage. One is never safe there, one is only tolerated, and even if you stick to every rule the Israelis enforce, you still risk that your kids will be detained, that some soldier at a checkpoint messes with you, or that some AI-controlled security system maims you or one of your loved ones. You have no certainties as a Palestinian, only the certainty that Israel can at any time find a way to make your life hard. Then there are also the Palestinian hostages in Israeli dungeons, detained by the military, often on trumped-up charges or for minor acts of opposition. These hostages include children. They don’t always survive captivity, and life inside Israeli prisons is deeply scarring for all of them.

7. Israel’s war and propaganda strategy is a game of streamlined repetition. So you will hear again and again, ‘If the hostages are returned, this whole thing will end immediately,’ meaning that things could go back to the way they were before: Israel oppressing the Palestinians without people talking about it much. What the Palestinians do are desperate acts so at least the world pays attention and talks about their dire situation. It’s also a lie that the Israeli leadership is eager to get the hostages back; the longer this situation lasts, the more time they have to kill Palestinians on a much larger scale than before. This hostage crisis serves their Lebensraum project. They will only cry crocodile tears over these hostages, but they couldn’t care less. Also, if no Israeli bombs hit these hostages, they are, even in the nightmarish conditions of Gaza, well taken care of, better in fact than the way Palestinian captives are usually treated.

8. The media will emphasize that a small group of Palestinians ‘danced in the streets’ on October 7th, but will largely ignore the many, many instances of Israelis celebrating the death and destruction they are causing, mocking their victims, and claiming that they enjoy going to concerts more knowing that the Palestinians are suffering and languishing in tents.

9. Western politicians will from time to time drip out a few words of condemnation but will not lift a finger to stop Israel from killing. And if you would just follow the money and map out the relationships between all these politicians, Israel, and business, you would immediately understand why Israel is always given a free pass. It’s much more profitable in terms of influence to side with Israel than it is to side with the Palestinians. Israel is America’s outpost to exert influence over one of the most oil rich regions in the world, the Middle East. Nothing the US does is ever about humanitarian efforts, it’s always about its own economic interests and drive to dominate.

10. Israeli violence is self-defense. Any violence done by any of its neighbors is terrorism. Israel and its simps love to throw around words that should scare the living daylights out of every ‘sensible’ or ‘rational’ person. It’s a trick they try to play on people who are not familiar with what’s been happening. One just has to hear the words ‘terrorism’ and one is already halfway there on the path to blaming everything on Israel’s neighbors. It’s simple propaganda, and until the rise of social media, it was quite effective. Israeli propaganda hasn’t adapted to this new way information is spread.

11. You will never see a mainstream journalist confront the outright lies people like Anthony Blinken have spread. U.S. officials always get only soft-ball interviews, whereas pro-Palestinian voices—more accurately put, pro-truth, pro-bigger-picture voices—have to be beaten into submission and have to first condemn October 7th before they are even allowed to say anything else.

12. Israeli violence will be swept under the rug with mysterious ‘blasts’ and ‘strikes’ appearing in headlines that do not assign blame. It’s almost as if godly forces intervene from the heavens to punish the enemies of the chosen people.

13. The resistance to the occupation uses terrifying words like ‘jihad’ and ‘intifada,’ but Israel gets away with labeling its operations in the most sinister ways, like ‘new order,’ and its AI kill machines get labeled ‘lavender’ or some such almost romantic-sounding name. What could be scarier?

14. Even though the facts are out there and people like Zachary Foster, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and so many others, have laid out in all possible detail that the Palestinians do resist peacefully but are then always gunned down, that Gaza was never really given back, and Hamas was not always on the warpath, and the peace deals Israel offered were traps—even though all this is out there, pro-Palestinian voices are asked to prove the same stuff over and over again, because facts are put away as mere opinions and always attacked by the interviewers. When paid Israeli trolls or government officials go on talk shows, their myths are never challenged. They are allowed to repeat the lies about how Israel came to be, lies about how Israel always generously offered peace, how it does whatever it can to minimize civilian casualties. Israel is also never asked the most fundamental question: if it can really bomb itself out of the quagmire it’s created for itself? Violence namely begets violence.

15. The U.S. will claim not to have known of Israeli plans to bomb some target, but that is a ridiculous argument to wash its hands in innocence. If they can’t be sure how Israel is going to use its weapons, then why do they keep supplying Israel with any weapon and any bomb it wants?

16. The U.S. will pretend that they are trying to mediate, but that their hands are tied. This is of course a total lie. Also, how weak does this make a superpower look? We cannot hold back this tiny little country! Either the U.S. is weak or it approves of what Israel is doing.

17. Israel defenders are always weak on arguments and will often just pretend to feel joy at Palestinians dying. They will write something like ‘You jihadnik, soon Sinwar will be shredded into tiny little pieces.’ This is obviously not done to have a serious discussion, but so they can feel powerful for a second by hopefully causing you some discomfort. The same with lazy and unoriginal comments like ‘cope harder’ or ‘cry harder.’ Since they find it hard to cope with life and have much to cry about, they actually think these are very effective comments. How they ever help Israel is a big mystery. Helping Israel is never their intention; it’s merely that Israel supporters think that Israeli violence is legitimate and by supporting Israel, they can enjoy violence, guilt-free. Israel fans are the kind of fans you’d wish on your worst enemy, since they make everything worse for the country they say they want to defend.

You will also see how much mysoginy and how many incel terms these commentators throw around. Worshipping Israel is essentially about worshipping violence, control and dominance. It’s thus only logical that people who hate women, because they can’t live out their fantasies of wanting to control or dominate them, are attracted by Israeli propaganda and triggered by the defenders of Palestine who usually show qualities traditionally associated with women, such as empathy.  

Israel fans don’t really comment to get a viewpoint across. Their comments are weak attempts to inflict pain. They are a verbal extension of the Israeli violence they love so much. This also explains why they so often revert to ad hominem attacks and are quick to comment on a person’s appearance. What else to do when the truth is not on your side and you know next to nothing about an issue?

Criticizing a genocide or repeating the rulings of international institutions then easily becomes ‘You are a Hamas whore.’

18. Republicans and Democrats only compete over who supports Israel more. That’s maybe the only issue they are both genuinely passionate about. Maybe, just maybe, migrants, guns, and abortion, but Israel is way more important.

19. There is systematic racism and Islamophobia, but accusing someone of being an Islamophobe carries no weight. We have been conditioned to think of people who say anything the least bit bad about Israel as the equivalent of the Nazis. Islamophobia and racism towards Arabs don’t cause any kind of stir. Arab culture and Arab history are arguably the least understood and most misrepresented. The same to some extent for Russian, Iranian, and Chinese society. Basically any society that in some way hampers American hegemony.

20. Palestinian, Lebanese and other leaders and military commanders who stand up to Israel are always portrayed as the purest evil, as if they were born that way and didn’t all experience one traumatic event after the other, caused by Israel. If even half the horror, the humiliations, that happened to them, had happened to anyone among us, how would that person react? Israel creates the circumstances for people, if they have it in them, to respond with armed resistance. The options available to them are limited and easy to judge by people who grew up in relatively comfortable circumstances. Israel is portrayed as this benign entity, biggest victim of all time, and always has the right to defend itself, but this right is denied to everyone else. If you think Israel is not the victim, please go back to point 1. Even if you think Israel is a victim, but not the biggest victim the world has ever had, you will get a D minus. Israel is not just a victim, it’s the biggest one ever.

21. But it’s not going to take it lying down anymore!! No, no, these are not your grandparents’ Jews anymore, these are new and improved ones. And these new ones do everything exactly like the Nazis who killed their grandparents and if you don’t like it, you are… a Nazi. It’s quite the anti-semitic statement to make ‘we are not your grandparents’ Jews anymore’. It implies they have the greatest disdain for the victims of the Nazis. Israelis do not just excel at infanticide, they also excel at scoring own goals.

22. By keeping the discussion locked in the same repetitive debates over who is really using human shields, hostages, what is terrorism and what is not terrorism, Apartheid, historical comparisons with South Africa, interpretations and labeling of October 7th, ego battles over who remembers more details about this almost century-long issue, Israel avoids the most crucial threat: talk about an actual fair solution to this whole mess, because a fair solution is bound to be a full stop to Israel’s expansionist and supremacist ambitions.