{"id":7290,"date":"2022-05-25T18:40:10","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T06:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/?p=7290"},"modified":"2022-05-26T09:51:32","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T21:51:32","slug":"stuff-questioning-the-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/2022\/05\/stuff-questioning-the-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuff: Questioning the narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"
First published by Stuff and Dominion Post<\/a><\/p>\n The recent shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh ignited social networks and media outlets with accusations that Israel had committed a war crime by deliberately targeting the journalist.<\/p>\n Tragically, Abu Akleh was caught in the midst of a gunfight in an Israeli anti-terrorist operation in Jenin, a terrorist hot-bed. Israel has called for the Palestinian Authority to co-operate in an investigation, but the Palestinians are refusing to hand over evidence. In all likelihood, without Palestinian co-operation, the truth will never be known. However, that didn\u2019t stop media outlets, Palestinian leaders and their supporters from repeating the unsubstantiated claim that Israel deliberately targeted her.<\/p>\n The background to the conflict in Jenin was the spate of terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens in the past two months. Nineteen civilians in Israel have been murdered in seven separate terrorist attacks since mid-March<\/a>. The latest attack in Elad was a particularly brutal axe murder<\/a> which took the lives of three men and left 16 children fatherless.<\/p>\n Did these deaths provoke an outpouring of rage and grief on social media? Were there calls for the images of the 19 murdered Israelis to be projected on public buildings? To the contrary, Palestinian social media was awash with celebratory posts, while Palestinian leaders praised the bravery of the terrorists and declared, \u201cWe will trample over the skulls of the Zionists; Israel will be annihilated\u201d. While overseas leaders expressed sympathy for the murdered, New Zealand\u2019s leaders and media were largely silent.<\/p>\n How is it that the world routinely turns a blind eye to the murder of Israelis? Partly, it\u2019s due to a dominant narrative that posits Israel as a colonialist foreign occupying force that has progressively displaced an indigenous people through ethnic cleansing. However, this popular narrative bears little relationship to reality.<\/p>\n Jews are the indigenous people of the regions of Judea (Judea and Jew both derive from Judah, a son of Jacob\/Israel) and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. It is in Israel that Jews had their ethnogenesis, developed their unique culture and maintained a continuous presence for more than 3000 years. This despite expulsions and dispossession at the hands of successive colonising powers.<\/p>\n In the 19th century Jews returned to their ancestral land in greater numbers and Europeans and Arab leaders alike recognised that the land belonged to the Jews. The British Mandate for Palestine<\/a> came about in much the same way as Mandates for Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – each carved from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, defeated in World War I.<\/p>\n