RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Israel-Hamas-Iran conflict, still dominating world news, remains volatile. Anti-Israel demonstrations — often devolving into violent riots – have taken place in many countries in the past 23 months. Some were even held on, or just days after, the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023 – in support of the massacres. There have been so many events and social media statements that amount to vilifying Israel and the Jewish people — too many “incidents” to ignore. As a Dutch academic, I plead here for less emotion and more dispassionate factual debate on this tragic conflict and about the need for honest solutions for both sides.

In June this year and onwards, students in the Netherlands organized blockades on campuses to enforce an academic boycott and blacklist Israeli institutions. The students pressured universities to end cooperation with Israeli universities — an effort that betrays academic research and freedom. Many activists and protesters said they were “inspired” by the students on US campuses during the past year. My university, Leiden, joined as well. An “Advisory Committee,” in what appears to be another example of misplaced virtue-signaling, pressed the university to cut academic links with Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It halted all academic exchanges. Such a boycott is unacceptable and will, of course, hit the wrong persons and not produce anything except sabotaging scientific cooperation. It would also not help the Palestinians.

In addition, an opposition party spokesperson in Parliament (of the socialist PvdA-Green Left) proposed a law last June to prohibit the Netherlands from exporting spare parts used for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, which protects its citizens. A more perfidious proposal cannot be imagined – brought exactly at the moment when Israel was engaged in armed conflict with Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, led by an Islamist-theocratic regime, has been a problem for the entire 46 years of its existence. According to its current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime has prepared for decades to annihilate Israel and the United States – “not as a slogan but as a policy.” The anti-rocket system being targeted by Dutch and other politicians has been protecting Israeli civilians of all faiths and backgrounds against the thousands of Hamas rockets fired at Israel on and after Oct. 7, and against those fired by Hezbollah.

While Palestinians voiced their local grievances and continued their anti-Israel agenda, the big “inspiration” for the recent actions of these terror movements was apparently Iran’s theocratic regime. It has a record of well-documented Israel-hate, abuse of its own citizens, decades of international terrorism — and a relentless suppression, torture, imprisonment and murder of women, children, and minorities — as well as crushing other domestic freedoms. Iran’s policy seems to consist of continuing its terror and planning for the destruction of Israel (the “Little Satan”), the destruction of America (the “Great Satan”), infiltrating Latin America, and killing Americans. These are hardly matters of doubt. The mullahs also appear to have a long-term, wider goal of infiltrating and transforming the rest of the planet:

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”
— Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran had already infiltrated and taken over at least four countries — Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria – at least until November 2024, when Assad’s regime collapsed. Western protesters never seem concerned about that. Proposals to make Israeli citizens defenseless against indiscriminate rocket fire are therefore tantamount to inviting mass murder. It is deeply worrying that, since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict, many critics of Israel, such as a Dutch parliamentarian, often seemed to support Iran over Israel, and have sympathy for Hamas as a supposed “resistance” rather than as the jihadist terrorists they are, and to show more concern for the “innocent civilians” in Gaza than for the victims and kidnapped hostages from Israel. It is often glossed over what Hamas’s intentions are:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” — Hamas Charter, 1988, Article 13

So we seem to have here a serious case of mixing up the “good guy” and the “bad guy”. While in any war there will be mistakes, Israel cannot simply be labeled the “bad guy”. Apart from any country thus attacked having the right to forcefully act in self-defense, nowhere in history has any country gone to such pains as Israel not to harm its adversary’s civilians. Nowhere in history have people under attack brought such amounts of humanitarian aid to the people under a regime trying to destroy them. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee tweeted on 8 August:

“How much food has Starmer and the UK sent to Gaza? @IsraeliPM has already sent 2 MILLION TONS into Gaza & none of it even getting to hostages. Maybe UK PM ought to sit this one out & follow Arab League who said Hamas should disarm & release ALL hostages immediately.”

Thousands in Israel remain internally displaced, a fact never mentioned by the United Nations or anyone else. In addition, “one-fifth of the Israelis who were forced to evacuate” by the war — roughly 50,000 out of 250,000 — have lost their business or means of livelihood. The massive terror, destructive sexual violence, torture, sadism, burning alive of people, decapitation, and the extermination of entire families of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks reveal the group’s hate-based genocidal ideology, already formulated in its charter:

“As the prophet [Muhammad],may the prayer of Allah and his blessing of peace be upon him, said: ‘The time [Judgment Day] will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them and until the Jew hides behind the rocks and trees, and [then] the rocks and trees will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding [behind me], come and kill him…'” – Hamas Charter, 1988, Article 7

It is consequently shocking to see the “reversal of blame” in many mass demonstrations and in the statements of many countries, including EU members France, Ireland and Spain. They blame Israel — not Hamas — for the violent conflict and for just about anything else.

Before October 7, 2023, Israel had generously granted, as a good-will gesture — nearly 20,000 work permits to Gazans to enable them to come daily to Israel, where they could receive higher wages than in Gaza. As some commentators have claimed, Israel is therefore accused of having “brought it all upon itself”.

Before the statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 8, 2025, that Israel intended to occupy Gaza City to root out the remnants of Hamas, Israel was also accused of being the “occupying” power in Gaza. Not exactly. In 2005 the Israeli government removed and even forcibly expelled every last Jew from Gaza to give the Palestinians autonomy there and a chance to build a “Dubai on the Mediterranean“. All the same, Israel has been accused of “targeting civilians” in Gaza (sadly, civilians were killed, as in any conflict, but Israel never targeted them as such); was “genocidal” – even though for more than 70 years — since the 1948 war — Israel has been trying to protect itself from genocide; that Israel had “denied aid” to Gazans, even though it was left to Israel, not the UN, to deliver humanitarian aid to its adversaries in a war zone, committed “ethnic cleansing“, and so on.

Scrutinizing these charges shows them to be incorrect. One example: “genocide” is not just any term but legally means mass lethal violence under “intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such”. Israel is not involved in this: there is simply no intent. The only aim is to defeat Hamas, the Islamist terrorist force that massacred, raped and kidnapped civilians with the professed intent to murder as many Jews and Israelis as possible. Hamas terrorists were even chanting the “Khaybar Ya-Yahood” slogan – used in the Islamic prophet Mohammed’s time during the extermination war in the year 628 CE against the Jews of the town of Khaybar. Another example is the so-called famine — incorrectly named, due to deep flaws in reporting and in the UN’s opportunistic IPC manipulation.

For the record, it is always necessary to dismantle all incorrect charges on any war, as well as expose mistakes and tragic events. Yet, the malicious narratives about Israel keep thriving regardless of this effort. So, part of the problem lies in understanding how the narratives are produced and recycled, and by whom, and a broader critical analysis — rather than a pro-Israel narrative of denial, however justified — is needed. In this effort, reports from Al Jazeera (an unreliable Qatar outfit), the UN’s OHCHR, institutions such as the European Parliament, or ‘human rights’ NGO’s like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, cannot be considered as offering decisive evidence.

Ever since the State of Israel was officially founded in 1948, it has had to survive in a hostile region. The country has done so with extraordinary success, despite continual efforts by its neighbors to destroy it. It has defended itself in the various wars and waves of terrorism against it, and thwarted the recent efforts of Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Shi’ite militias – to eradicate it.

Since 2005, more than 20,000 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey, along with at least 100 suicide bombings. How many rockets, missiles and suicide bombings would France, England, Canada or Australia tolerate?

It is shocking is that after Hamas’s Oct. 7 violent assault, the waves of “anti-Zionist” hate were directed not only against Israelis but also, increasingly, against Jews worldwide — including in the United States — and often spearheaded by Muslim activists and people on the extreme “left” and extreme “right” in a strange alliance – one that has usually not turned out well, as in post-1979 Iran.

Most of the anti-Israel/anti-Zionist agitation has been accompanied by the frantic denial that one is “not anti-Semitic” – but it is an “argument” that no longer convinces anyone. The waves of anti-Jewish hate-mongering, in fact, began even before Israel entered Gaza, and by now have become commonplace. Even large American teachers’ unions, to their shame, have been spouting anti-Semitism. This rampant vilification, already seen at universities such as Harvard and Columbia, has become a serious problem. This vilification and boycotting now also extends to the cultural domain (music, theater, movies) and urgently needs to be confronted.

Israel is a state well-founded in international law. Its existence cannot seriously be a point of dispute. Israel has always wanted simply to be left alone. It had no need to seek war with any neighbor, and every need not to seek war. The Abraham Accords, politically stabilizing and economically beneficial both to Israel and several Arab countries, show that real peace can be achieved. It is revealing that no demonstrations criticizing Israel’s campaign against the Iranian regime and its proxies have been seen in Arab countries. Indeed, many Arab governments — notably the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia — appear, behind the scenes, quite comfortable with Iran’s regime being held to account.

Iran’s policies, sadly, have not helped the Palestinians and, unfortunately, have made their situation worse. Iran’s propaganda and bankrolling of Hamas — together with that of Qatar, the champion and sponsor of effectively every Islamic militant organization –.created an infrastructure of terror that not only blighted the Palestinians and Gazan society but, as first-hand expert Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the founders of Hamas, noted, successfully poisoned its young generation.

Israel, a sovereign state, did not need permission from anyone to try to neutralize the Hamas-Hezbollah-Houthi-Iran threats before or after Oct. 7. Many individuals in the West apparently like to deny or ignore that these major threats apply not only to Israel but to all global security.

The anti-Israel demonstrators in the Netherlands and elsewhere, who are often intimidating passers-by, blockading public roads, occupying buildings and campuses, probably are either paid or think they know everything better — or both — at a time when Israeli citizens and civil institutions are being targeted, along with hospitals and research institutes. Israel’s hospitals, unlike those in Gaza, do not house terror command centers. The Weizmann Institute, a renowned Israeli research center serving world science, had 45 laboratories destroyed by an Iranian missile.

It is painful to see that these demonstrators and parliamentary activists always accuse Israel of the violence initiated by Hamas. Why is so little ever said about Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis? People seem to refuse to recognize that the war was jointly orchestrated by Iran’s repressive Islamist regime and its proxies – the same Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — as a long-term policy. The exuberance these protesters seem to feel to “put Israel in its place” and demonstrate “because civilians are killed in the Gaza war” is distorted, biased and regrettable. The deaths of Gazans are unarguably sad, and sympathy with non-combatant victims is entirely understandable, but there have been deaths of non-combatant civilians on both sides. Hamas and many Gazans have recorded them with glee and immediately vowed to repeat them.

People unfortunately get killed in wars. In Hamas’s case: If you do not want your people killed, do not start an unprovoked war. Israel cannot sit back and decline to defend itself. Israel’s response to an extremely violent and cruel adversary has been violent, but Israel still has taken pains not to “mirror” the Hamas violence and become like them, even at the cost of exposing its own soldiers to great risks.

In Gaza, the large majority of casualties have actually not been civilians, as Hamas has tried to claim. Even the UN had to halve its own casualty statistics.

Conversely, Hamas, rather than trying to prevent the death of their citizens, deliberately puts them in harm’s way. The terrorist group continues to use their own people as human shields, and shoots at them if– at the urging of the Israelis — they try to flee to safety or if they try to seek the humanitarian aid intended for their use. Far from regretting the deaths of ordinary Gazans, Hamas simply blames Israel for them, and fakes the numbers for use as anti-Israel propaganda. The real nature of the war is not clearly represented in the media, which would do better in heeding true experts such as John Spencer or Andrew Fox.

The genocidal slaughter carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 in the most barbaric manner was the culmination of countless media demonizations — online and off – as well as constant acts of terror, rooted in jihadist ideology, against Israel as well as Jews in the rest of the world. Appallingly, Hamas’s slaughter was often “lauded” by sympathizers across the globe — not only hardcore Islamists, but notably also in Western “far-Leftist circles“. Many of these critics ideologically — and wrongly — tried to redefine Israel as a “colonialist” entity, despite Israel having been strongly anti-colonialist, intent on opposing Britian’s failed policies against the Jews — including many Jews ordered hanged — during the British Mandate for Palestine – from 1917 until Israel’s independence in 1948.

If you watch recordings of October 7, 2023, made by Hamas terrorists themselves on GoPro cameras, it can be seen that they were extremely proud of what they did. Just recently, a young Palestinian who elatedly telephoned his parents from the field to brag about how many Jews he had murdered, was “neutralized” by the IDF. The immediate “statements of support” for the atrocities committed in the October 7 attack, even among academics in Western institutions, were distressing — and not acceptable.

Today, the remaining hostages are being deliberately starved, given — only occasionally — contaminated water, and forced to dig their own graves.

Even before 2023, Palestinian leaders and their worldwide backers rejected all initiatives for peace, mutual acceptance, and dividing land for a Palestinian state — including even the most generous proposals.

Since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians have had far-reaching autonomy and self-rule in most of the “territories” under dispute. Discussions on definitive solutions have so far proven impossible: there have not even been serious Palestinian counter-offers. Former PA President Yasser Arafat’s rejection of the most generous offer ever — in former US President Clinton’s words — for a Palestinian state in 2000 by the then Israeli PM Ehud Barak is just one example.

“For the last century,” noted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 10 August, “[the Palestinians] have been offered a state of their own. And they refused, because their goal is not to create a state for themselves, it’s to destroy…the Jewish state. That’s their national goal. So we’re not going to …commit national suicide.”

The Palestinians, to clarify what seems some confusion, are Arabs who had lived in Israel before 1947. When five Arab armies – Egypt, Lebanon Iraq, Syria and Trans-Jordan (now Jordan) — invaded Israel the day of its birth, May 21, 1948, to try to kill the new country before it could begin — most of the Arabs there were urged by others to flee to make it easier to kill the Jews — then return in “in 2 hours“:

“We left, I mean, the one who made us leave was the Jordanian army, because there were going to be battles and we would be under their feet. They told us: ‘Leave. In 2 hours we will liberate it and then you’ll return.’ We left only with our clothes. We didn’t take anything because we were supposed to return in 2 hours. Why carry anything? ”
— Fuad Khader, Refugee from Bir Ma’in, Official PA TV, May 15, 2013.

The Arabs lost and now call this defeat and its aftermath the naqba (the “Catastrophe”). When those Arabs who had fled (and indeed in some cases were chased away in the heat of the war) later tried to return, Israel declined for security reasons to admit them. Their Arab brethren also refused to admit the Palestinian-Arab refugees who had fled from the War of Independence in the former Mandate territory and now suddenly Israel—instead, requiring them to linger in refugee camps.

The Arabs in Israel who did not flee currently make up 20% of its population are equal citizens as the Jews in Israel with equal rights, except for mandatory military service, from which they are excused, if they wish. Many of Israel’s Arabs are leaders in medicine, politics and the government, business, the Israel Defense Forces (voluntarily) and even on the Supreme Court.

Notably, Zohair Mohsen, one of the former senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization, set up in 1964 and the precursor of the Palestinian Authority, publicly admitted in 1977, is that the Palestinians are an invented people that actually “does not exist“:

“The Palestinian people does 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.”
— Senior PLO official Zuheir Mohsen, interviewed by James Dorsey, Trouw (a Dutch newspaper), March 31, 1977.

Now, after decades of violent rejection and terrorism, the Palestinian momentum appears to have passed. Palestinians, and least of all groups such as Hamas, have not expressed a clear desire to recognize and live in peace with a Jewish state in any borders.

At the moment, especially after the massacre of October 7, 2023, a separate state for Palestinians is more remote than ever, despite the attempt by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to hook it up to life-support. He seems to have the view that placing a terrorist state, openly dedicated to wiping Israel off the map, back on the border of Israel will lead to a “just and lasting peace” – or perhaps some “other” solution.

What is clear is that his announcement succeeded in torpedoing all ceasefire talks, previously underway, and dealing a death blow to a deal on Hamas returning the remaining hostages. Macron, followed in his wake by other European leaders, such as Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the UK and Prime Minister Bart De Wever of Belgium may have effectively signed the hostages’ death sentence.

“Talks with Hamas fell apart on the day [French President Emanuel] Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize the Palestinian state,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “…. If I’m Hamas, I’d basically conclude let’s not do a ceasefire, we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.”

“Such a move,” Prime Minister Netanyahu replied to Macron, “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launchpad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it.”

It now turns out, in addition, that the Trump Administration’s “helpful” mediator, Qatar — champion of virtually every Islamic terrorist group – instead of ordering Hamas to release the hostages, has been ordering Hamas not to release them.

The US administration’s view is clear from the words of US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, telling Fox News on May 31:

“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them − carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state. They are welcome to do that, but they are not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation.”

That there is no demonstrable will on the Palestinian side yet to accept a Jewish state and live in peace with it is also shown by the still existing “pay-for-slay” “jobs program” of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA). Each year, the PA rewards the relatives of terrorist killers who murder Jewish Israelis to funds totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Who pays for this? The European Union — accompanied by Abbas transferring the operation to the PA “security services” to hide what it is funding — as well as others in the international community. Even the Canadian Federal Court had already condemned this PA policy in a 2020 judgement.

The Palestinian leadership has also long insisted on a ‘Jew-free‘ future for the Palestinian state, even in Hebron — one of the four oldest Jewish cities, and where Arabs annihilated the Jewish community in 1929. Macron’s gesture is destructive, if not treacherous.

Britain, Canada and recently Australia and Belgium followed suit, although with preconditions – and Britain with a tinge of blackmail. A unilateral recognition is also in contradiction with the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and 1995 and has other problems. A Palestinian state now would not only be a de facto reward for terrorism, it would also inspire other terror movements to intensify their violence. The lesson the terrorists would take home would certainly be, “Terrorism works, so let’s keep on doing it.”

Who, moreover, would lead such a state? What would be its borders? The simple point these Western countries miss is that October 7 did not happen because of the lack of a “Palestinian state”, but because of the existence of one: Gaza since 2005 has been fully under Palestinian control, and since 2007, fully under Hamas control. There has been no peace.

Most anti-Israel demonstrators in the Netherlands and elsewhere are probably of good will, concerned about the loss of human life in Gaza. So, while this alleged cause is good – such as compassion and asking a halt to the killing of Gaza’s civilians -– it cannot go at the expense of another cause: stopping the murderous terrorist violence of Hamas and related entities against Israel and the Jews and victimizing their own people in Gaza. There need to be serious calls on the Palestinians, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, and radical Islamist imams to stop the politics of violence, of which Palestinians are equally the victim. The demonstrators never do that. The pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas crowds also never show the slightest concern about the Israeli hostages. 48 are still held in the Hamas tunnels, in worse than medieval dungeons, and abused, tortured, starved, as well as an estimated 30 of them possibly already murdered or dead. If all the hostages would have been released, the conflict in Gaza could have ended long ago. Not one Palestinian – Hamas member or civilian — ever came forward to help and inform on their whereabouts.

For most demonstrators in both the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West, nothing else ultimately seems to matter except blaming Israel and Jews, and expressing indignation and hatred, seemingly out of some self-ascribed moral superiority. Many protests also appear to be funded and organized by outside actors. Since 2023, Europe alone has donated more than 13 million euros to undermine Israel. The civilians in Gaza need attention and protection, but will not be helped in the least by biased pro-Hamas performances of “concern”. Such hand-wringing will not eliminate either Hamas or its abuse – in particular, that of its own people. Ironically, hand-wringing only serves to reinforce the violence: the publicity appears irresistible.

Why is real, practical concern for the suffering Palestinians not paramount among the protestors? Just look at the global media and NGOs’ reactions to the recently established Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that since May 2025 has been providing humanitarian food aid to Gazans to bypass Hamas’s channels for stealing it. Hamas would take all the humanitarian aid for itself and then sell it at extortionist prices to the people for whom it was intended for free. Hamas has reportedly made more than half a billion dollars from stolen aid. The “acquisitions” not only pulled in increased revenues for Hamas, but were apparently also be used as bait to recruit hungry new jihadists to fight. The GHF was partly set up to supplement and also bypass the slow UN (also still active, but collaborating with Hamas) to break Hamas‘s stranglehold. The UN has admitted that 90% of what it tried to deliver was intercepted by “armed actors” before reaching its destination. The GHF has been vilified and falsely accused of killing Gazans most likely by default: because its actions were carried out by Israel and the US. Despite serious deadly incidents around logistics and distribution points – mostly due to Hamas sabotage and killings, but also some initial, insufficient IDF “crowd control” incidents — it has been fairly successful in getting food supplies to the public. It is disturbing to see the global media refuse to admit that the GHF is breaking the UN-supported Hamas grip on incoming aid, which has delayed the proper delivery of the supplies to the Gazans. There is enough supply; the problem is its distribution, due to Hamas theft and the UN’s failure to timely and properly deliver the aid. Some in the media evidently also saw no problem in broadcasting news about Israeli “aid massacres” that never happened.

In much of the global reporting, there has not only been undue castigation of Israel but shades of plain old Jew-hate — often, it appears, largely based on Soviet propaganda as well as Islamic theological culture, or rather its abuse. In it, the Jews are vilified, as well as repetitions of these vilifications in schools, mosques, textbooks, summer camps, social media, television and even crossword puzzles, that keeps them current. For Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, it is standard fare.

Most Western activists, oddly, are never heard expressing any real knowledge of the historical backgrounds of the conflict, as a recently “converted” activist admitted. Perhaps there is no interest. There certainly is no serious understanding of, or compassion with, the murdered, abused and injured Israeli citizens — whether Jewish, Druze, Christian, Muslim — or with the visiting African students or Thai workers who were also victims of the Oct. 7 assault. They, too, were taken hostage, tortured, burned alive or butchered. No word either on the 12 Druze children murdered in a Hezbollah rocket attack on a football field in Majdal Shams on July 27, 2024.

What about the people who died in Gaza? Yes, thousands of Gazans tragically became victims of the war. A war, however, cannot be judged only by its effects. The intention of Hamas, which initiated the war, was mass-murder and destruction, whatever the consequences. There were many civilian victims in Gaza but the largest group of those killed in Gaza were Hamas terrorists and operatives. Hamas targets civilians, including its own. No one can maintain that it is Israel’s policy to target civilians. An analysis of its methods of war reveal multiple warnings to civilians before battle, such as millions of phone calls, leaflets, texts, as well as knocks on the roof and slow house-to-house and tunnel-to-tunnel advances. Even then, sadly, as is inevitable in all wars, occasionally mistakes are made.

Hamas, on the other hand, has a straightforward policy of targeting Israeli civilians, obliterating Israeli communities and of using its own people as human shields and putting them in harm’s way. Hamas has consistently embedded its command posts, weaponry, rocket launchers, and other weapons, in Gazan civilian areas as well as in its sophisticated and extensive tunnel system under residential buildings, mosques, hospitals, schools and the like. Hamas also kills Gazans who contest its terror reign (here and here), and violently intimidates and selectively shoots those distributing and accepting humanitarian aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Plenty of online speeches by Hamas spokesmen confirm their utter cynicism regarding the ordinary Gazans who, to them, seem to be nothing but human shields. All civilians killed in the crossfire are literally declared “good for the cause”. Even when, as now, Hamas loses support among the Gazans, it still tries to retain a murderous grip on them.

What the recent public demonstrations in the Netherlands and elsewhere show is mostly “selective outrage,” morally and politically lopsided. There appears to be hardly any interest in reconciliation or efforts at dialogue, and more in condoning or stimulating antipathy against Israel. As noted, this view often seems shaped by Islamist and (post-) Soviet propaganda discourse targeting Jews and Israel (as detailed by Izabella Tabarovsky). Dutch media also do their best to keep the biased narrative going (as analyzed already in 2019 in Els van Diggele’s study The Deception Industry (De Misleidingsindustrie).

It is painful to see so much false rhetoric produced in the public demonstrations and misguided boycott initiatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere. On June 21, 2025, the Dutch PvdA-Green Left Party Congress resolution adopted a “total arms embargo” on Israel — including spare parts for its Iron Dome protective system. On August 8, Germany’s new government also voted to embargo arms sales to Israel. And worst of all was the Spanish government, led by the rabid anti-Israel Prime Minister P. Sánchez, who, next to his exaggerated anti-Israel rhetoric, in September declared a total boycott of arms imports and exports from/to Israel and a closure of all Spanish ports to any Israel-bound vessels. Such 1930s-like embargoes not only sell out Israel’s civilian population to lethal terrorists; they also demonstrate insensitive posturing by people who have no idea of the kind of war that is going on and apparently are not even interested in finding out. Even domestic protesters in Israel against PM Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza do not go along with such proposals that endanger their homeland.

Admittedly, the suffering in Gaza is real. There has been food scarcity, death and despair. However, what realistically can be done to defeat and neutralize Hamas, including its abuse of its own civilians? Hamas started the genocidal campaign on Oct. 7, 2023, and have repeatedly said that they intend to do it time and again, “until Israel is annihilated.” Members of Hamas sacrifice ‘their own’ people –- sometimes with reference to the Qur’an — and reject every meaningful hostage return and ceasefire – most recently on July 24 and September 9. There is adamant refusal to hand over the 48 remaining hostages, only 20 of whom are thought still to be alive. It is an impossible and needless war, started by an Islamist movement, Hamas, that is violent by nature. Since 2005, Hamas has been wholly in charge of an unoccupied, independent territory, Gaza, supported by Iran, which is called by the US Department of State the “largest state sponsor of terrorism.”

Few if any demonstrators ever came out in support of the Oct. 7 victims in Israel — 1200 murdered in the most unspeakable manner, and the 251 hostages abducted – or showed much concern for Iranian citizens blindfolded and hanged from building cranes. These demonstrators have neither shown particular concern for Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, Alawites, or ordinary Syrian citizens murdered by Islamist extremists, or for the thousands of Christians being slaughtered throughout Africa and the Middle East (here, here, here and here). In most public demonstrations about the Middle East, only the Israelis are targeted. Regrettably, the frequent lies and false accusations produced have consequences. Anti-Semitic attacks on Jews worldwide have increased, especially in the West, and Jewish life there has become less secure. Homes, synagogues and businesses have been vandalized, and individuals murdered solely because they were Jews.

The gross neglect by those “noble” demonstrators of other long-standing violent conflicts in the world outside the Middle East, where tens of thousands of civilians are also killed, is indeed breathtaking: Sudan, Ukraine-Russia, Myanmar, the DRC, Somalia, the Syrian civil war, the harsh repression of Muslim Uyghurs in China (more than half a million in camps) and the gross repression and erasure of women in Afghanistan, on which even the UN is dismayed. Yet there are no public demonstrations on these anywhere.

Media in the Netherlands and globally often appear uninformed — and perhaps blissfully unaware of it. Failing to present news in a balanced manner and undermining honesty and integrity in reporting is a lack of professionalism. Recently there was media mayhem about a Gazan boy in the arms of his mother (in a Pietà-like position) as a so-called victim of starvation. In reality, he has cystic fibrosis – although lack of nutrition may have aggravated his condition — and had been brought to Italy for treatment. Corrections of mistakes (or of knowingly false reports) are rarely published by the media; if they are, they can usually be found only on a back page. In the Netherlands, we already knew that the Dutch dailies NRC, the Volkskrant — let alone some of the Dutch opinion weeklies – constantly attack Israel. The attacks often do not appear to be “legitimate criticism,” which would be appropriate, but more like demonization, fed by ill-will and a seemingly painstaking omission of all relevant facts. In addition, the (originally Christian-oriented) Dutch newspaper Trouw has turned squarely against Israel and the Jewish people, and joined the chorus of misinformation and misleading criticisms, often based on substandard reporting, along with delegitimization and glaring double standards. As in the NRC newspaper, the label “genocidal” is carelessly and deviously applied to Israel’s actions – throwing its precise meaning in international law out the window. Citing dubious “experts‘ in the matter does not help either.

Lately a new theme has been systematically to accuse Israel of causing deaths by famine. As recently as August 2025, a UN IPC report declared “famine” in Gaza. The charge is rightly contested. This seemingly political move was made days after Israel announced it would enter Gaza City, the last stronghold of the Hamas forces. The UN IPC, basing its report largely on unreliable Hamas data, also lowered some of its usual criteria for concluding that a famine had been reached. That mistaken venture once again undermined the UN’s authority and credibility. There are serious conditions in Gaza, but the blame has to be laid at the feet of the UN for refusing to deliver the aid, and at those of Hamas for stealing the aid then selling it to Gazans at inflated prices.

One need not sacrifice the truth to admit those failures, or completely neglect the misery of death, trauma and displacement in Israel itself. Trends in foreign news media reveal that many seem happy to blame Israel without bothering to get the facts. The BBC, for instance, which has long had a serious bias problem, was corrected dozens of times for its often intentionally misleading reporting. In the background, the UN and its unreliable and often scurrilous reports have had, as probably intended, a distorting impact on the media.[1] The UN’s Commission for Human Rights, populated by solid human rights abuser-countries and with its strange and frequently off-the-mark chairperson Volker Turk, has for years made it an everyday job to accuse Israel. Together with the UN’s so-called special rapporteur “for the occupied Palestinian territories”, Francesca Albanese — an unprofessional person frequently shown to utter anti-Semitic remarks — they all have done enormous damage, also as probably intended. Their reports are hardly reliable guides in assessing any aspect of the Middle East. Israel, which will go nowhere, is fighting for its people, its survival and for the survival of the West.

As a state, Israel is well-rooted in international law, contrary to what many uninformed Western critics seem to think. They like to cite what many call the “Leftist fringe” in Israel (such as the newspaper Haaretz: decades ago a worthwhile, respectable paper, but since then (here and here) producing questionable stories and maneuvering itself into the margins. It is read by barely 16% but adored by those in the media who are looking for material with which to demonize Israel (“Even Jews say it!”), or by self-appointed “Jewish spokespersons” in the West to criticize Israel’s policies and efforts at self-defense. Peter Beinart comes to mind, or, recently, Omer Bartov, who falsely accused Israel of “genocide”.

Mainstream news outlets do not seem aware of the subtleties of internal Israeli debates or that they themselves often perpetuate the stereotypes, prejudices, hate and “blood libels” towards Jews who have trodden through more than 3000 years. Outside powers also interfere in Israeli domestic politics, e.g. by funding government opponents. For example, since 2023, Europe alone has donated more than 13 million euros to them.

The media also neglect — or deny — the pervasive humiliation and persecution of Jews since the seventh century in the Arab and Muslim world, and that Arabs were major slave-traders and still are (here and here). Arab and Muslim history may have had episodes of mutual tolerance and cooperation, but it was also full of unpredictable violent outbursts. In 15^th century North Africa in the Sahara region, as just one example, there was an extermination of the Jewish community of Tamantit, reportedly motivated by Islamic theology. More recently, the 1941 Farhud in Baghdad, Iraq was a gruesome massacre of Jews.

Seeing the gross media bias, distortion and orchestrated lies in the press coverage and the hypocrisy among so-called progressives, as a non-Jewish (former) leftist, I have woken up, so to speak – despite my still socio-economically left-of-center attitudes. The “progressive” political leftism on this conflict is fake and often utterly mistaken. It is important to realize its sources. Lingering Soviet propaganda is one of them. Yes, right-wing blah-blah on Jews, Israel and the Middle East is also obnoxious (US commentator Tucker Carlson comes to mind), and support for Israel is not, and should not be, just a “right-wing” cause. The so-called progressives of today, however, are of an ideological, history-immune bent and are apparently prepared to sell out the ideals of the Enlightenment: women’s emancipation, empirical evidence, reason, justice and compassion, when they collide with their sympathies for certain groups of victims — in this instance, “the Palestinians”. The Palestinians are indeed victims – but of their own corrosive, corrupt leaders — lavishly funded by Qatar, Iran and Europe –not of Israel or the Jews. It seems that self-appointed progressives love carefully selected “victims”, who are never blamed and are usually denied any agency. Of course, Palestinians very much do deserve support and a better chance to live their lives, which includes leaving Gaza if they wish. However, by backing Hamas and other violent jihadist radicals, the supporters of terrorists in the West — a remarkable number of whom appear to be in academia — do not give the Palestinians a chance for better lives, careers or governance. These activists spoil the university environment to no good purpose and stimulate Israel –– and Jew-hatred — even if they vehemently deny it: “We are only anti-Zionist”, which has produced exactly nothing and only perpetuates the Palestinians’ decay.

The contending parties in this Middle East conflict should, of course, go back to balance, reason, and compassion; those commenting on it should abandon their agitprop on both Israel and the Middle East. We can’t escape the need for more fact-based debate. Sympathizers of Hamas-like groups might also do with some study of history. Many do not see that evolved mindsets in the Middle East are quite different from Western ones. The expansionist and violent Islamism of Iran’s regime, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah (and in the background, Qatar) is rooted in dogmatic theological hatred, not in “social justice” or “universal rights”, except as defined by shari’a law. This view has only brought repression, misery and death. The Druze community in southern Syria has come under attack from the forces of Syria’s new regime, in particular from its associated jihadist militias in what seems horrifying “purging” and mass murder. The Druze and other minorities in Syria are still under direct threat. The world, it seems, barely cares, least of all the “pro-Palestine” demonstrators.

Only Israel has vowed to protect the Druze. It did so despite already being attacked on more than seven fronts if you include international diplomacy, and the risks of escalation. In the rest of the world, no demonstrations were organized in support of the Druze community, certainly not in the West, nor was there any response by organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, ICG, Human Rights Watch, or all the so-called “concerned” NGOs.

International mediation has not, so far, been successful, perhaps because there has been too much of it, such as faulty Western interference. Too often, as well, “help” has been delivered by problematic mediators, such as Qatar (which, behind the scenes, seems to have been instructing Hamas to hold out). More local initiatives and dialogues are needed to sort matters out, although such proposals first have to be produced within Palestinian society itself. A commendable initiative was also that of imams from Europe visiting Israel trying to build bridges. European governments and parliaments here offered exactly no follow-up.

It may indeed be that in such conflicts as in Gaza, one side must win and the other side be totally defeated – as in World War II – to prevent the dispute from simmering indefinitely. Only that kind of shock might provoke self-reflection, admitting past mistakes, changing mindsets, eventually respecting the different “other”, and working toward some sort of new accommodation.

One cannot negotiate when the other side wants your people dead. Up to now, that has been the position of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, jihadists, many other Palestinians and Iran towards Israel and the Jews. As Israel seems to have concluded, this objective cannot be allowed to last.

The most positive development would be to work towards a joint future of recognition of each other’s existence, economic exchange and integration, as under the successful Abraham Accords. A fundamental change of regime in Iran would also denote major progress. It may be unrealistic, however, to expect the Iranian people to attempt an uprising again without outside coordination and help, but the departure of bellicose mullahs would certainly help — as would dismantling Hamas, removing the corrupt and violent Palestinian Authority, and removing the Hezbollah terrorist movement from Lebanon’s political and military landscape.

Demonstrations and public protest are, of course, basic rights in the West. In Middle Eastern conflicts, however, they have been biased towards terrorist movements and their supporters, and even largely based on bankrolled disinformation (here, here and here). The resulting boycotts against Israel now in Germany, Spain, the UK and Canada are not even slightly useful; they only serve to completely kill any possibility of negotiating for the release of Hamas’s remaining hostages, as well as negatively pressurizing governments (recently the Dutch) into dead-end and biased anti-Israel policies.

Finally, just after France and the UK joined a number of European countries in announcing their intention to “recognize” a “Palestinian state”, Hamas published videos of totally emaciated, starved Israeli hostages, one of whom, Evyatar David, was photographed digging his own grave. It is quite clear who is “the bad guy”, European recognition or not. Unfortunately but predictably, the UN General Assembly held on September 12, 2025 duly followed suit, endorsing again the so-called “two-state solution”. Allying with people dedicated to upholding terror movements, if not subverting international law and dismantling civilizational standards as some Western governments now seem to be doing, may well be a sign of impending political collapse. Israel’s legitimate case and wider geopolitical security in the Middle East will not be furthered by it. The frame must be reset.

Jon Abbink is an anthropologist-historian (emeritus professor). He has worked at the universities of Nijmegen, Amsterdam (UvA and VU) and Leiden in The Netherlands, as well as at Kyoto University, Japan.