the October 7th 2023 attack against Israel has since the minute that it happened often been presented as little more than a random nonsensical Outburst of barbarity and hatred it's as if the targeted Israeli settlements and military bases on the Gaza border had just sprouted out of the ground there one day unfortunately right next to millions of Palestinians who also just sort of happened to be there who knows why that presented as little more than born anti-semites motive invaded by nothing more than an irrational Primal hatred of their pure and well-meaning Israeli neighbors as the French
sociologist did fine summarized according to this narrative the history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians begins on 7 October 2023 there is no past this simplistic framing has been used since to justify and apologize for the subsequent Israeli attack on Gaza still ongoing at the time of this video's release but in reality there's much more to it so this video is not about the events of October 7th or what's happened since it's rather about what happened before we will discuss how exactly in the first place there came to be a densely populated Gaza Strip
with millions of Palestinians in it which is surrounded by the same perimeter of Israeli military bases and settlements that was attacked on that day and as we go along it will become clear that this history is very relevant context to the events of October 7th The Narrative surrounding it and Israel Palestine in general this is the real history behind October 7th this video was made possible thanks to my supporters on patreon and Kofi if you like it and you'd like to see more like it consider heading over there and supporting me yourself years ago I
read a review by the Israeli historian Avi schlame of a book by another Israeli historian Benny Morris I was struck by the disconnect between the way that both schlame and Morris wrote about the events that they were describing and how horrific they clearly were the book in question is called Israel's Border Wars which in large part deals with the way that Israel police the new borders of the land that it sees from the roughly 800,000 Palestinians who it expelled or killed during its founding in 1948 summarizing the book schlame wrote Israel's Border Wars is a
study of Arab infiltration into Israel across the armus lines and of subsequent Israeli military retaliation that description makes it sound like Israel was subject to crossb espionage operations by devious Arab infiltrators as they call them who were looking to cause havoc and Mayhem by violating this Armistice line otherwise why would they use such a Negative sounding word for them like infiltrators and why would what they were doing warrant milit AR retaliation unless it was some sort of unwarranted aggression but what Morris was actually writing about is then described in much more detail by schlame the
evidence gleaned by Morris suggests that infiltration into Israel was a direct consequence of the displacement and dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the Palestine war and that the motives behind it were largely economic and social rather than political many of the infiltrators were pal inan refugees whose reasons for crossing the border included looking for relatives returning to their homes recovering their possessions tending their fields harvesting and occasionally exacting revenge in the period of 1949 to 56 as a whole 90% or more of all infiltrations in Mars's estimate were motivated by economic and
social concerns such as those infiltration from across the border placed Israeli settlers lives at risk exacted a heavy economic toll and raised the possibility of mass desertion of settlers there was also the threat that the infiltrators would try to reestablish themselves in their former homes inside Israel infiltration in short posed a danger not only to the country's day-to-day security but also to its territorial Integrity to cope with this threat Israel established new settlements along the borders and raised abandoned Arab Villages Israeli units began patrolling the borders laying ambushes sewing mines and setting booby traps a
free fire policy towards infiltrators was adopted periodic search operations were also mounted in Arab Villages inside Israel to weed out infiltrators the soldiers who carried out these operations committed acts of brutality among them gang rape and the murder of civilians all together between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period between 1949 and 56 the great majority of them unarmed and that is just the number that official Israeli records acknowledged despite the use in these passages of the Israeli propaganda term infiltrator it's still abundantly clear that what's being described is not some sort of
dastardly evil plot it's rather refugees who were forced from their land and homes by Israel who were simply trying to return there and who were often killed for it because their attempts to lay claim to their homes to return to and farm their own land to retrieve the belongings they had left behind or even just to make a Sentimental visit were a judged to have posed a threat to the legitimacy of the new Israeli State and it Settler's claim to that land the tiny Gaza strip's extremely dense population today is a direct result of this
history it was one of the main places that Israel expelled Palestinians to from 1948 onwards and many of these so-called infiltrators being being talked about here were crossing from Gaza attempting to return to homes that were often so close that they could be seen from the border before 1948 gaza's population was around 880,000 soon afterwards due to the arrival of more than 200,000 refugees expelled by Israel it expanded to upwards of 300,000 aish schlame and Benny moris a part of a group known in Israel as the new historians historians who came to prominence in the
80s and '90s known for covering historical events especially Israel's crimes against Palestinians that were and still are denied or ignored in more mainstream mythologized Israeli recountings of their state's history they achieve notoriety and fame for breaching these taboos and particularly for not denying what the evidence showed about the defining event of Israel's founding the 1948 mass killings and expulsions of Palestinians known as the but this is something that could only be considered radical and subversive in Israel itself because in the rest of the world these facts were already very well known the forced expulsion of
the Palestinians was already acknowledged by the UN in 1948 the same year it happened even Israel's staunchest Ally the USA acknowledged it by default when along with dozens of other countries they voted affirmatively on a resolution demanding that Israel allow the refugees who they had ethnically cleansed to return to their homes in reality many of these new historians were not aiming to challenge Israel's legitimacy at all and Morris definitely wasn't he's since gone on record stating that he actually believes that the killings and expulsions of Palestinians which he wrote about were a good thing Justified
because they were necessary to found the state of Israel in Israel they were nonetheless seen as very subversive and even as something of a threat to naal security despite the fact that few of them had anything resembling subversive political aims because for Israel historical facts are themselves understood as a threat even if they're being presented by someone who thinks that everything that they're describing was totally justified because if the truth about how Israel was founded and how it's since been maintained becomes more widely known and if more people learn about the incredibly enlightening context that
this provides to the situation and events of today then the entire Israeli narrative just crumbles and when you're a state like Israel which is heavily dependent on International support to even exist the crumbling of your narrative can be a very perilous thing the mainstream Israeli line is based on this idea of Israelis as righteous victims who merely fight back against inexplicably aggressive Palestinians motivated by little more than a base anti-Semitism that's presented as practically innate something that they're pretty pretty much born with and that's kind of Shattered by these sorts of stories of expelled Palestinians
leaving Gaza to desperately try and return to their homes perhaps to retrieve a Priceless Keepsake or just to try and return to the only life they've ever known and being intercepted raped and murdered by the same Israelis who forced them out that makes the actual reasons why Palestinians might hate Israel pretty clear when prominent pro-israel activists and organizations think of aren't looking they're happy to admit this pro-israel lobbying groups have for example in the Past released propaganda guide books advising Israel supporters on what sort of talking points to use and one of their key points
is that they should talk about the future not the past Ru wise a prominent American pro-israel activist once made a similar point in a shockingly blunt fashion you've got to learn how to fight back on the campuses how to make the arguments now they keep shifting you know it it it the ground keeps shifting under us they keep changing the language intersectionality wasn't even a word 10 years ago now suddenly it's intersectionality you've got to stay on top of it and you know how we train for the Army we don't train for defensive Warfare if
the if the war against Israel ever had to be fought on Israeli soil do I have to tell you it's it's an impossibility so it's the same thing don't let the war of words ever be fought about Israel's nature never let the discussion be about Israel's nature because the only way that Israel's narrative can hold up is if events are very carefully cherry-picked and then that limited selection is presented in complete isolation devoid of history and context this familiar strategy has been put into overdrive regarding the events of October 7th partisans for Israel are desperate
to avoid or impede any discussion of how this came to be in the first place you've probably already gleaned a bit of the history behind it from my discussion of schlame and Morris's coverage of so-called Arab infiltrators this encirclement of settlements and military bases is known as the Gaza envelope an apt name given that their purpose is to keep the people of Gaza sealed in without exception every Israeli settlement on the border of Gaza was founded with a primary motivation that went far beyond just being a place for people to live and even the few
that were founded before the expulsions of 1948 and the official establishment of the Israeli state were created with very openly stated ulterior motives two of these pre-1948 settlements for example Nim and Barry were founded by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Jewish National Fund back then the leading Zionist setor organization on locations which were strategically chosen as part of what was called the 11-point plan this plan was devised in 1946 in the hopes that establishing a Jewish presence in areas that up until then had mostly been populated by Palestinians would legitimize their plan to
take said areas for their future State Nim greatly expanded in 1948 annexing large amounts of adjacent Palestinian residential and agricultural land after the residents were expelled to Gaza and those are actually two of the least turbulent histories out of all of them because most were founded after 1948 and the locations of these post 1948 settlements that were founded around Gaza were actually decided directly by the Israeli military themselves to serve military purposes to best integrate them into Israel's territorial defense system they were designed from the very beginning to be human shields for the Israeli state
that purpose was to prevent the Palestinians who they had forced into Gaza from reestablishing themselves on their land the settlement of manen is the most obvious example of this it was established in 1949 on the side of the recently ethnically Clans Palestinian Village of almain whose inhabitants were forced into Gaza where those still living and their descendants remain today mgan is a particularly unsettle name as it literally means she Shield they weren't exactly trying to hide it in 1949 the settlers in the shield towns on the Gaza border were given express permission by the Israeli
government to kill any suspected Palestinian they saw this was a permission that the settlers used liberally and in fact they even wanted it expanded in 1950 the Negev settlements committee an organization representing all of the Border settlements met with the Israeli military they complained that Israeli soldiers frequently raping and murdering Palestinians were subsequently causing them to cross the border seeking revenge and that this was putting the settlers at risk their solution however was not to punish the soldiers for their crimes or anything like that that might make sense it was rather to demand that they
kill more Palestinians and that the settlers themselves be given more weapons and training so that they can also do it better themselves and they made good use of their new equipment and training as one isra historian admits residents of these new border settlements regularly participated in anti-infiltration activities they very much relished in their role as the Israeli Colonial Vanguard they were the hunters of Native American sculps of their day the settlement of maalum was founded by settlers who moved to Israel from Argentina and Uruguay in 1949 they chose to form their settlement on land annexed
from Gaza it's actually so close to Gaza that before 1948 it was a neighborhood of Gaza City itself but was cleared of its Palestinian population in the nakba residents of maalim were less enthusiastic about their role and considered the killings of unarmed Palestinian infiltrators to be unfortunate Necessities that they were somehow forced to engage in Nash lha is a settlement that like Magan and a couple of other Israeli settlements in the area is also located on the lands of the village of Alm it was originally founded by former members of Lei a notorious Zionist terrorist
group also known as the stern gang after the nakba they decided to found a settlement on the border of Gaza for the exact reasons that you would imagine that people like that would choose such a location they were later reinforced by other military veterans who had the same idea re the settlement closest to the Nova Music Festival held near Gaza on October 7th was founded in 194 9 by Veterans of the palmach a Zionist militia active throughout the 1940s its accompanying R military base and other nearby Israeli settlements such as kisim stand on the land
of the tarim bin people whose traditional way of life was shattered when most of them were forcibly deported by Israel in 1948 nahal Oz one of the closest settlements to Gaza was founded in 1951 as a nahal settlement in contrast to some of the other settlements populated by armed civilians who were not technically formal members of the military nahal settlements were founded by active duty soldiers to act as a first line of defense against Palestinian infiltrators ahead even of the already existing settlements that were themselves meant to serve the same purpose this initiative started when
the Israelis decided that their original strategy of killing infiltrators and demolishing their Village in homes so that they would have nothing to go back to had failed to discourage all of them from crossing the border anyway so they sought a more efficient way to keep soldiers on the border ready to shoot them and just having them live there was what they ended up deciding on this block of settlements in the South near the border with Egypt are unusually close together for Israeli border settlements this is because they were established by Israeli settlers who were forced
to leave Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in 1982 they were originally located on Egyptian land being founded there after 1956 when Israel occupied part of Egypt with the intention being that settlements there could be used to legitimize a possible future Israeli annexation of the area when that failed to materialized due to a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt the Israeli settlements in Egypt were evacuated and then refounded on the Israeli side of the Border next to Gaza yeah they even tried to colonize Egypt the settlers just had to establish new settlements right outside of Gaza they have
no shame whatsoever these settlements are built on the sides of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian Villages of alari Alamar and alawi those aren't the only settlements founded by the former Settlers of Egypt though nativ harara located just 400 m from the heavily militarized border with Gaza was also founded by them in 1982 from settling Egypt to settling right next to Gaza it was a big thing in Israel nearby arz was founded by Israeli settlers who moved into and rename the Palestinian Village of dimra in 1950 which had been depopulated by Israeli troops in 1948 back then
residents of the Town regularly participated in anti-infiltration activities such as randomly firing machine guns into populated areas of Gaza zikim a lovely little Beach town was was founded in 1949 by settlers from Europe on the site of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian Village of Heria nearby kmia was also founded on the land of hiia by settlers from France and Tunisia who joined the nahal military settler organization immediately upon their arrival in Israel and what about the few larger Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope the two most important ones are sedarat and ashalon sedarat Grew From a
settlement that was founded on the site of the Palestinian Village of njid after the hundreds of Palestinians who lived there were expelled into Gaza by the Israeli military in 1948 it was intended to be like every other Israeli settlement on the Gaza border part of a line of settlements that could block the Palestinians Crossing from Gaza from returning to their homes it eventually expanded from those humble beginnings into a city of tens of thousands ashalon today the largest Israeli city in the region was founded in 19 50 following an ethnic cleansing operation where the remaining
Palestinian population of the town of alaj duul was expelled to make way for newly arrived Jewish settlers who immediately moved into their homes and onto their land in an initiative that was started by settlers from South Africa they kept the original name of the town for a time but it was renamed to ashalon in 1953 in an attempt to erase any memory of the 10,000 Palestinians who had lived there just a few years earlier today ashalon is the main Israeli Hub of the envelope region and as with most of Israel but particularly with this part
of it it only exists at the expense of the very Palestinians that Israelis often demonize as a side note before I get to the conclusion here I found it really glaring during my research for this video the way that Israeli historians write about Palestinians as if they're basically Wildlife that was sort of obstacles for the settlers that lamentably had to be put down and the sett practically always presented as if they are the ones who were in the right even though like any normal person reading what is actually written on the page would clearly think
they were in the wrong and I think a really good example of this aside from the ones that I've already gone over earlier is in one of the books that I've cited a few times throughout this video where the author talks about people who had literally just like 6 months earlier been ethnically cleansed from their homes across the Gaza border and he talks about them seeking to steal property in the agricultural produce of Jewish settlements and when I first read that I was like how is it possible to steal property and agricultural produce from the
people who were living in their homes and on their land and who moved in there in these cases like four or 5 months earlier nor less I think there is really something to glean from that of the way in which Israelis conceive of themselves their state and the Palestinians somehow even in cases where these isra historians who are willing to write openly about this stuff and who seem to believe that they are sympathetic to Palestinians WR about it they still end up writing as if they cannot conceive of the Israeli position being incorrect or wrong
in any way shape or form and yeah there's something there to be said about the Israeli psyche anyway so on to the conclusion what all of this shows resoundingly is that Israel's border with Gaza is a colonial Frontier it started out as something very akin to the American West with frequent confrontations between invading settlers and their victims and as also happened in the USA the colonial Force gradually increased its control over the area and of the indigenous population until such confrontations became less frequent but while things became safer for the settlers protected by the gradual
more formal militarization of the Border by the IDF over the decades their safety and comfort still continue to come at the cost of those imprison behind it who have continued to suffer for multiple further generations and whose suffering certainly no one can reasonably deny any longer now the settlers became so comfortable in fact that whenever Israel bombed Gaza many would set up deck chairs and enjoy the front row seat they had to the massacre despite physically still only being kilometers away from the Palestinians of Gaza despite living on the ruins of the homes of people
who were still within walking distance they now felt that they were secure able to freely enjoy the fruits of the atrocities that they and their forbears had committed in the not at all distant past they no longer needed to exact violence upon the Palestinians with their own hands they could watch on with Glee as war planes did it for them it was only a matter of time before things reached a boiling point a few years ago the Israeli anti-zionist activist aan brona paricio held an exhibit in the last original building that still stands of the
destroyed Palestinian Village of almain whose former sites multiple Israeli border towns are now built on it presented to the settlers who live on the land today the history of almain the deportations and killings of its residents and its subsequent destruction by Israel most of those who came from the nearby Israeli settlements to see the exhibit were outraged according to them the land was empty when they got there and atan should have been arrested for his treasonous lies even the less inflammatory Reflections were still not much better we won the war since when has the Victor
returned what he won it was clear that ignorance was not much of a problem there most of them were well aware of the truth they just denied it or Justified it but there was at least one settler apparently somehow ignorant up until then of the history of the land that she lived on who was deeply moved by the exhibit ephat cut said what I've seen here today was very moving and even painful in spite of living here more than 35 years I feel the need and the hope to return to the land and revive it
with the past emotions to revive it with the culture and habits of yours the residence a land is a value it is roots it is a love of a place there is no room for deportation my heart is with you Israeli media reports indicate that ephrat cats was killed by Hellfire missiles fired by Israeli helicopters on October 7th as they executed the Hannibal directive an Infamous Israeli policy of killing their own citizens rather than allowing them to be be taken hostage the people of Gaza were and still are the prisoners of Israel those who man
the military insulations on the border and those who live in the settlements that line it are intended to be the Israeli State's jailers and its human Shields whether they realize it or not I can only hope that those who serve such a role whether it's for Israel or any other state in a similar situation come to their senses and abandon it colonialism is an innately violent Enterprise and those on its Frontier are always going to be at very high risk but it's still nowhere near the risk that is faced by the colonized who simply by
existing on their own land face unavoidable violence the settlers on the other hand have the option to Simply say no enough I won't be a part of this anymore and leave many propagandists have since the events of October 7th attempted to frame the residents of the Gaza border towns as Pro Palestinian peace activists but the true history of these settlements makes it abundantly clear that this is the exact opposite of the reality one has to be either sadistic or willfully ignorant to live there by choice as is the trend with Israeli propaganda such a narrative
can only fo people who know absolutely nothing about them or The Wider situation you do not advocate for Peace by very deliberately moving onto stolen land living in stolen homes and serving as a porn for a colonial power on its front line with its victims the settlements are only there in the first place to further Israeli Colonial a there is clearly no practical reason for them to be in such a clearly volatile area otherwise in 1948 the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu was ethnically cleansed from almain and forced with his family into Gaza in 2019 he
wrote about the Israeli settlements on the Gaza border built on the ruins of his community he concluded then that there is not much space left in the denial bubble to hide when the whole world knows about the crime Justice will catch up with them and the remedy will be too heavy a price to pay it was a preent prediction although those who pay by far the highest price for Israeli crimes past and present continue to be the Palestinians themselves thanks for watching if you like this video then make sure to subscribe to the channel for
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