This weekend over 130 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, yet the top trend on twitter is #TerroristIsrael.
Today, whilst filling out an application I was asked a question somewhere along the lines of 'What is the biggest problem facing Jewish students on the subject of Israel today?' My answer was miscomunication and misunderstanding. The media publishes as they wish, and send out messages according to their ideology. Not once was the rockets fired into Israel mentioned on the weekend news. All these misconceptions promote hatred against Israel as people seem to only be given a one sided story.
The aim of this blog post is to reply to some of the tweets in this trending topic tonight. I would also like to draw your attention to http://honestreporting.com/ which explains the facts on Israel and is a good source of information.
One misconception people seem to have is that Israel uses children as human shields. This is in fact incorrect. It happens that it is actually the other way around. When Israel does plan an attack, leaflets are dropped and there are radio messages giving enough time for civilians to evacuate. Hamas have been known to have their military bases in locations such as underneath hospitals and schools for security purposes as if these places are attacked it will be deemed non-humanitarian and Israel will once again face the world's critique.
Israel is also seen to be an apartheid state. The definition of apartheid is a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race involving political, legal and economic segregation. Palestinians are allowed to work in governmental roles for example Ishmael Khaldi, a Muslim diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What is an apartheid state is Iran which promotes gender apartheid and believe the life of a woman is worth half of a life of a man. Some Arab-Islamic countries in the Middle-East will not allow Jewish people to work in government or practise as lawyers or doctors. That is apartheid. Every week, Israel opens its gates and allows Gaza citizens to be treated in their hospitals. They also supply food and aid, which brings me to my next point. When the Jewish people evacuated Gaza they left a flour mill for the Palestinians to for start their economy amongst other things. This, the Palestinians burnt down. Instead of the world focusing on how Israel is an evil oppressor, maybe more attention should be focused on the rest of the Arab 'spring' and Middle East where human rights are clearly lacking. Israel is the most democratic of the Middle East, so maybe after the democratisation of the Arab World, one can look on to see if Israel is behind time.
A tweet I actually laughed at was one which said that Israel kidnap Palestinians in order to get their demands heard. Did no one else see the release of Gilad Shalit and the message after that Hamas now want another Gilad to fulfil its aims and get more of their terrorists released. Although there is no one clear definition of terrorism, it is widely accepted kidnapping comes under an act of terrorism, so please ask yourself who is fulfilling terrorist acts? Israel or Gaza?
In terms of a two state solution, I leave this post with a quote I strongly believe in: 'If the world put down its weapons, there would peace; If Israel put down its weapons, there would be no Israel.'
