Myth vs Fact
MYTH: “Criticizing Israel = Antisemitism.”
TRUTH: No, it doesn’t. Criticizing U.S. policy isn’t anti-American. Criticizing Israeli policy isn’t antisemitic. It’s accountability.
MYTH: “All Jews support Zionism.”
TRUTH: Many Jewish people have always opposed Zionism—because of their faith, not in spite of it.
MYTH: “Zionism is just Jews wanting safety.”
TRUTH: Safety is essential—but it can’t come through someone else’s oppression. True safety never grows from injustice.
MYTH: “You have to choose sides.”
TRUTH: You do. But not in the way people think. Not Israel vs. Palestine—you choose justice over empire, love over fear, truth over silence.
Top 10 Myths About Israel-Palestine (And the Truth Behind Them)
Myth 1: “The land was empty before Israel.”
Truth: That’s a colonial myth.
There were over 1.3 million Arabs—mostly Palestinian Muslims and Christians—living in Palestine before 1948.
They had homes, farms, cities, schools, newspapers, and rich cultural traditions.
In 1948, over 750,000 of them were violently forced from their land during the Nakba (“catastrophe”) by Zionist militias—through massacres, threats, and terror.
Entire villages were destroyed. Families fled with nothing. Many never returned.
This wasn’t “empty land.” It was emptied.
Saying the land was empty before Israel isn’t just false—it erases an entire people’s history, heartbreak, and existence.
You can’t “return” to a land by pretending no one else was already living there.
That’s not return. That’s displacement.
Myth 2: “God gave this land to the Jews, so it’s theirs.”
Truth: God’s promises were never blank checks.
In Scripture, land was always tied to justice, mercy, and covenant. The prophets warned: when Israel broke those values, the land itself would spit them out.
Even if you believe God made a promise to Abraham, that doesn’t justify taking land by force, expelling families, or denying others their dignity.
Divine promise doesn’t mean divine permission to oppress.
Modern Zionism claims inheritance—but ignores the ethics that came with it.
You can’t claim biblical prophecy while violating everything the Bible says about how to treat your neighbor.
Faith doesn’t bulldoze homes. Prophecy doesn’t excuse apartheid.
Myth 3: “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Truth: Democracy for some is not democracy at all.
Israel calls itself a democracy—but millions of Palestinians live under its rule with no vote, no freedom of movement, and no protection under the law.
In the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the water, the roads—and the people.
Palestinians are subject to military law, tried in military courts, and held in prisons without charge.
If one group has full rights and the other has checkpoints, walls, and curfews—that’s not democracy. That’s apartheid.
True democracy means equal rights for all, not just the chosen few.
Voting for one government while ruling another people by force is not freedom. It’s control dressed up as legitimacy.
Myth 4: “Palestinians are all terrorists.”
Truth: That’s racist, dehumanizing, and false.
Most Palestinians are ordinary peaceful people
—parents, students, doctors, artists, children—doing their best to live under one of the harshest military occupations in the world.
They aren’t terrorists.
They’re the ones being terrorized.
This isn’t about perfection—it’s about humanity. And Palestinian humanity has been ignored, erased, and maligned for far too long.
Labeling an entire people group as violent is how systems justify their oppression. It’s how colonizers excuse land theft.
It’s how injustice hides behind fear.
But Jesus didn’t buy into those labels. He saw through them.
And He calls us to do the same.
Myth 5: “But they voted for Hamas.”
Truth: That vote happened nearly 20 years ago—and the story is more complicated than you're being told.
The last election in Gaza was in 2006. Hamas won, but not because most Palestinians supported violence.
Many voted for them because Hamas ran schools, hospitals, clinics, and food programs—services the official government and international community had abandoned.
For many, it wasn’t about ideology. It was about survival.
And today?
Most Palestinians can’t vote at all.
Gaza is under blockade. The West Bank is under military occupation. Israel controls the borders, the movement, the economy—and there’s no democratic process for the people most affected by it.
You can’t bomb a population for an election they didn’t choose and can’t change.
Blaming 2 million people for the actions of a few is collective punishment, not justice.
And Jesus never punished the crowd for the sin of the few.
Myth 6: “Israel only targets Hamas.”
Truth: If that were true, thousands of children wouldn’t be dead.
Israeli airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, mosques, and entire refugee camps.
Thousands of civilians—mothers, fathers, babies—have been killed.
Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
That’s not precision.
That’s collective punishment.
That’s not surgical.
That’s systemic.
Even if there are militants present, you don’t get to flatten a city to reach them. That’s not self-defense—it’s devastation.
Jesus told us to leave the 99 to find the one.
He didn’t say, “Burn the village to catch the rebel.”
Myth 7: “There’s never been a Palestine.”
Truth: That’s historical revisionism used to justify erasure.
Palestine existed for centuries—under Ottoman, British, and Arab rule—as a land with its own cities, culture, and people. It appeared on maps, in travel logs, in literature, and international records long before Israel was established in 1948.
Palestinians didn’t just show up.
They were already there. Living. Farming. Teaching. Building communities.
They didn’t vanish.
They were displaced. Disempowered. Denied recognition.
This myth isn’t about accuracy—it’s about control.
If you have to erase a people’s past to justify your politics,
you’re not defending truth—you’re spreading propaganda.
And Jesus?
He never erased the oppressed to comfort the powerful.
He called the forgotten by name.
Myth 8: “Criticizing Israel is antisemitic.”
Truth: Opposing injustice is not the same as hating a people.
Criticizing the actions of a government—any government—is not antisemitism.
It’s accountability.
Many Jews—Orthodox and secular, Israeli and global—have long spoken out against Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid, and violence.
Judaism is not Zionism. And Zionism is not above critique.
Standing with Palestinians isn’t antisemitic. It’s human. It’s moral. It’s Christlike.
Yes—antisemitism is real and evil, and must be confronted.
So is the suffering of Palestinians.
We can—and must—oppose both.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s integrity.
Jesus never confused power with righteousness.
He never stayed silent for the sake of politics.
Myth 9: “It’s complicated.”
Truth: The history may be layered. The suffering is not.
Yes, the region has a long and complex history.
But watching children pulled from rubble, families evicted at gunpoint, and entire communities trapped behind walls—that isn’t complicated.
That’s wrong.
That’s brutal.
That’s sin.
“Complexity” is often used to stall moral clarity, to avoid taking a stand. But Jesus never needed perfect context to step in with compassion.
Apartheid is not complicated.
Ethnic cleansing is not complicated.
Stealing homes is not complicated.
The history has layers.
But the injustice is crystal clear.
Myth 10: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Truth: Yes—and so do Palestinians.
Every people has the right to safety.
But “self-defense” doesn’t mean leveling cities, starving civilians, or trapping millions behind walls and checkpoints.
You don’t get to call it defense when:
-
It targets hospitals and refugee camps.
-
It blocks medicine and fuel.
-
It leaves entire families buried in rubble.
That’s not security.
That’s domination in disguise.
And while Israel is armed with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, Palestinians live under occupation—with no army, no state, and no freedom of movement.
True safety doesn’t come from crushing your neighbor.
It comes from justice, dignity, and equal rights for all.
Jesus didn’t teach us to protect power at all costs.
He taught us to lay it down for the sake of the vulnerable.