The Lies, The Labels and the Facts

Colonisers. Fascists. Genocidal. Apartheid supporters. White supremacists. Occupiers.

We’ve been called all of these things and more.

Some of the accusations are ignorant. Some are lazy. Some are born of genuine misunderstanding.

And some are deliberate lies repeated so often that people become convinced they are facts.

Because that is how propaganda works.

A label is attached. A slogan is repeated. A chant is memorised. And before long, people stop asking the most important question of all:

“Is it actually true?”

The accusation becomes the evidence. The slogan becomes the argument. The chant replaces critical thinking.

History has seen this before. Which is why Jews tend to recognise it when it appears again.

So let’s put aside the placards, hashtags and slogans for a moment.

Let’s look at the lies. Let’s examine the labels. And then let’s look at the facts.

You’re Fascists

This one is particularly entertaining.

Many members of the keffiyeh-and-slogans crowd will confidently inform you that Zionism is fascism.

The trouble is that neither word means what they think it means.

Let’s start with Zionism.

Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people on Earth, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

That’s it.

Not supremacy. Not conquest. Not domination. Not racial superiority.

Just the belief that Jews have the same right as everyone else to exist as a people in the land where our history, language, culture and identity were born more than 3,000 years ago.

So yes. Zionists? Absolutely. Guilty as charged. Because we believe Jews have a right to exist. What a scandal.

Now let’s look at fascism.

Fascism is an authoritarian ideology that suppresses opposition, centralises power, controls speech, crushes dissent and demands ideological conformity.

Which is why there is something deeply ironic about people screaming “fascist!” while attempting to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

The irony becomes even more striking when you remember one of the oldest propaganda techniques in history: Repeat a claim often enough and eventually people stop questioning whether it is true.

The accusation becomes the evidence. The label becomes the argument. The chant becomes the truth.

Or so the propagandists hope.

You’re Committing Genocide

This accusation gets thrown around so casually today that you’d think people had forgotten what the word actually means.

The term “genocide” was coined by Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin after witnessing the horrors of Nazi extermination policies and recognising that existing language was inadequate to describe the deliberate destruction of entire peoples.

Words matter. Definitions matter. Facts matter.

So let’s ask a simple question.

If Israel is committing genocide, where is the disappearing population?

Because populations undergoing genocide generally shrink. Dramatically.

Yet the Palestinian population has grown enormously over the past century – both inside Israel and outside.

The Arab population inside Israel has also grown enormously.

You can debate military strategy. You can debate governments. You can debate borders. You can debate settlements. You can debate almost anything.

But a rapidly growing population is not what history usually associates with an extermination campaign.

That’s not politics. That’s arithmetic.

You’re Ethnically Cleansing People

Ethnic cleansing is real. It’s horrifying. And history contains many examples.

Which is why it is worth examining actual examples rather than imaginary ones.

Less than a century ago, thriving Jewish communities existed throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Iraq. Egypt. Yemen. Syria. Lebanon. Libya. Tunisia. Algeria. Morocco.

For centuries Jews lived in these lands.

Then, within a remarkably short period of history, approximately 850,000 Jews were expelled, fled or were forced from their homes.

Entire communities vanished. Synagogues emptied. Neighbourhoods disappeared. Families lost homes, businesses and everything they owned.

Many Christian communities across the region experienced similar declines.

That is what ethnic cleansing looks like.

What Israel has never attempted to do is eliminate another people, force mass conversion or erase minority identities from public life.

Quite the opposite.

Israel today is one of the most diverse societies in the Middle East.

You’re an Apartheid State

This is perhaps the easiest accusation to dismantle.

Apartheid South Africa was a system in which one racial group held legal superiority over another and used the law to enforce permanent inequality.

It was ugly. It was immoral. And thankfully it ended.

Now let’s compare that reality with Israel.

If Israel is an apartheid state, it is a very unusual one.

Because Israel has Arab judges. Arab members of parliament. Arab diplomats. Arab doctors. Arab professors. Arab journalists. Arab police officers. Arab military officers. Arab entrepreneurs. Arab pharmacists. Arab surgeons.

Apartheid South Africa did not have black judges sentencing white politicians.

It did not have black political parties sitting in parliament.

It did not have black diplomats representing the country abroad.

It did not have black doctors running hospitals treating white patients.

Because if it had, it wouldn’t have been apartheid.

But there is another comparison that rarely gets mentioned.

Israel is surrounded by more than fifty Muslim-majority countries stretching across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

Many of those countries once had substantial Jewish populations.

Many once had much larger Christian populations.

Today, most of those ancient Jewish communities have disappeared almost entirely.

So let’s ask some uncomfortable questions.

How many Jewish Supreme Court judges sit across the Arab world? How many Jewish cabinet ministers? How many Jewish generals? How many Jewish ambassadors? How many Jewish members of parliament? How many Jewish police commissioners? How many Jewish university presidents?

In most cases, the answer is either zero or close to it.

Now ask the same questions about Christians.

Then ask the same questions about openly gay citizens. How many openly gay judges? How many openly gay military officers? How many openly gay politicians? How many openly gay cabinet ministers? How many openly gay members of parliament?

Then ask another question.

How many countries in the Middle East hold annual Pride festivals? How many permit openly LGBTQ organisations? How many allow citizens to publicly campaign for LGBTQ rights without fear of arrest, imprisonment or violence?

Now compare that with Israel.

Muslims sit in parliament. Muslims sit on the Supreme Court. Arab diplomats represent Israel abroad. Arab doctors lead hospital departments. Arab pharmacists make up nearly half of the profession. Arab officers command military units. Christians serve throughout public life. Druze officers rise to senior ranks. Openly gay citizens serve as politicians, journalists, soldiers, artists, business leaders and public figures.

None of this proves Israel is perfect. It isn’t. Nowhere is.

But it does raise an awkward question.

If Israel is supposedly the apartheid state, the colonial state, the fascist state and the racist state, why does minority representation look so dramatically different there than in so many of the countries constantly condemning it?

That isn’t an accusation. It’s a question.

And it deserves an honest answer.

You’re White Colonisers

This accusation is perhaps the most revealing of all. Not because it tells us anything about Jews.

But because it tells us a great deal about the people making the accusation.

The entire claim depends on forcing a uniquely distorted view of race in a region where it simply doesn’t fit.

According to this theory, Jews are “white Europeans” who arrived in the Middle East and colonised it.

There is just one small problem.

Reality.

Over half of Israel’s Jewish population descends from Jews whose families never lived in Europe at all.

They came from Iraq. Yemen. Egypt. Syria. Lebanon. Libya. Morocco. Tunisia. Algeria. Iran. And countless other communities across the Middle East and North Africa.

They spoke Arabic. Persian. Berber. Ladino. Judeo-Arabic.

They ate Middle Eastern food. Lived in Middle Eastern societies. And in many cases had been there for centuries or even millennia.

Around 850,000 of these Jews were expelled, persecuted or forced to flee from Arab countries during the twentieth century.

Many arrived in Israel with little more than the clothes they were wearing.

Apparently, according to the internet, these refugees are now somehow “white European colonisers.”

That requires a remarkable level of imagination.

And then there are Israel’s Ethiopian Jews. One of the world’s oldest Jewish communities.

Not white. Not European. And certainly not colonial settlers.

Then there are Jews from India. Jews from Central Asia. Jews from the Caucasus. Jews from Africa. Jews from the Middle East. And Jews whose families never left the Land of Israel at all.

The reality is that modern Israel looks less like a European colony and more like a family reunion after two thousand years apart.

Walk through Tel Aviv. Jerusalem. Haifa. Beersheva. Netanya. Ashdod.

Listen to the accents. Look at the faces. Look at the surnames. Look at the food. Look at the music. Look at the family histories.

You will find descendants of Europe sitting beside descendants of Morocco. Descendants of Iraq beside descendants of Ethiopia. Descendants of Yemen beside descendants of Russia. Descendants of India beside descendants of Poland.

All of them Jews. All of them home.

The “white coloniser” narrative survives only because it erases millions of Jews whose existence makes the story impossible.

The 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The Ethiopian Jews. The Yemenite Jews. The Persian Jews. The Kurdish Jews. The Indian Jews. The Jews whose families never left the region at all.

They are edited out because they don’t fit the slogan.

And that’s the problem with slogans.

Reality has a habit of getting in the way.

You’re Colonialists

This accusation may be the strangest of all.

Colonialism usually involves a foreign empire arriving in somebody else’s land, extracting resources and sending wealth back to a mother country.

So let’s ask a simple question.

Which empire sent the Jews? Britain France? Spain? Russia? Germany? Poland? America?

And where exactly was the Jewish mother country receiving all these colonial profits?

Jerusalem?

Because that’s where Jews have prayed facing for nearly two thousand years.

Not London. Not Paris. Not Moscow. Not Madrid.

A colonial movement doesn’t spend two millennia praying to return to the place it is supposedly colonising.

The accusation collapses under its own weight.

And Then There Is The LGBTQ+ Question

Let’s ask another uncomfortable question.

How many countries in the Middle East host one of the world’s largest Pride celebrations? Or any Pride fest for that matter?

The answer is one.

Israel. Every year Tel Aviv hosts one of the largest Pride festivals anywhere on Earth.

Israel has openly gay politicians. Openly gay artists. Openly gay journalists. Openly gay soldiers. Openly gay business leaders. Openly gay Muslim-Arabs. And yes, openly gay rabbis.

Now name another country in the region where that is true.

We’ll wait.

Because while Israel is far from perfect, it remains one of the few places in the Middle East where LGBTQ people can openly live their lives with legal protections and public visibility.

That isn’t propaganda. It’s reality.

The Numbers They Hope You Never Look At

Let’s put aside slogans and look at reality.

Israel’s population is approximately ten million people.

Of those:

• Around 74% are Jewish.

• Around 21% are Arab citizens, the vast majority of whom are Muslim.

• Around 2% are Christian.

• Around 2% are Druze.

• The remainder includes Baháʼís, Circassians, Samaritans and others.

That’s not a racially pure ethnostate. That’s a remarkably diverse one. Yes, Jewish by founding but fully inclusive, fully accepting of others faiths and beliefs. And the only Jewish state in existence.

Now let’s look at the Israeli healthcare sector. Approximately:

• 25% of Israel’s doctors are Arab.

• 27% of nurses are Arab.

• 27% of dentists are Arab.

• Nearly half of all pharmacists are Arab.

Think about that for a moment. Nearly one in four doctors. More than one in four nurses. Almost half of pharmacists.

In the supposedly apartheid state. The numbers simply refuse to cooperate with the slogan.

And what about genocide?

The Arab population living inside Israel in 1948 numbered a few hundred thousand.

Today there are more than two million Arab citizens of Israel.

The Palestinian population as a whole has also grown several times over since 1948. And even during the supposed genocide – the war in Gaza that the Gazans themselves starts, the population of Gaza has increased.

Again: You can argue many things. But extermination is not one of them.

The numbers simply don’t support it. They never have.

The Truth

Israel is not perfect. Neither is Britain. Neither is America. Neither is France. Neither is Australia. Neither is anywhere else.

We make mistakes. We argue. We protest. We vote governments in. We vote governments out. Politicians are investigated. Some go to prison. Courts overrule governments. Journalists expose scandals. Citizens complain endlessly.

In other words: Democracy.

Messy. Loud. Chaotic. Human.

Which is why these accusations are so frustrating.

Not because Israel is beyond criticism. Far from it.

Criticise policies. Criticise governments. Criticise military decisions. Criticise politicians.

That’s all fair game. Israelis do it every single day. Israel media does it. Again, that’s democracy. 

But calling Israel fascist doesn’t make it fascist. Calling Israel genocidal doesn’t make it genocide. Calling Israel apartheid doesn’t make it apartheid. Calling Zionism colonialism doesn’t make it colonialism. Calling Jews white colonisers doesn’t make them white colonisers.

The accusation is not the evidence. The slogan is not the argument. The chant is not the truth. And no amount of repetition can turn a lie into a fact.

Because facts are stubborn things.

And when facts turn up, the lies, the labels and the slogans start falling apart.

Bother to look closely enough and the entire paper-thin house of cards comes crashing down.