Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
(LifeSiteNews) — This series of articles is a response to the often angry, intolerant, and condemning complaints and accusations received from some readers of our articles on the Israel/Palestinian conflict. This, despite us having made one of the greatest efforts in our 27-year history to ensure that everything we have written has been fully verified and supported by numerous statements, links and other evidence from a wide variety of objective, trustworthy, sometimes Christian and frequently Israeli and other Jewish information sources.
We have also found it helpful to follow some Muslim news sources that have been surprisingly objective and professional, contrary to what the Western public are propagandized to believe about them.
For the several senior-level LifeSite journalists who have been researching and writing on this issue, this has been a greater challenge than we could have initially imagined, revealing history and numerous other facts that most of us were previously unaware of.
These discoveries have been personally disturbing and heart-breaking to the point, at times, of bringing some of us to sorrow and tears seeing so many images of young Palestinian children, mothers, fathers and other innocents unjustly enduring horrific harm and suffering unlike any that we have seen in the past.
Additionally, we also came to realize that most of the Western world’s public has been woefully misinformed about the true causes, facts and now catastrophic danger the Middle East and even the world is now imminently facing from this 75-year-old conflict.
Literally millions of lives may be at stake if the more extreme Zionists now in control of Israel are not reined in by an immediate U.S. halt to its massive military “aid” for Israel’s current expansionist ambitions, as happened during past wars in the region.
I don’t recall in all 27 years of LifeSite’s existence enduring such extreme intolerance for factual news reporting that contradicts long-held, immovable views of so many readers.
I suggest that most of these critics, like ourselves, have not been aware of critical history and facts about Israel and the varied indigenous peoples of Palestine – Muslim, Christian and non-Zionist Jews. Unlike ourselves, most of the critics have been exposed to only one controlled narrative and have not had the time, inclination, or ability to research the related issues to the extent that we have.
The many alternative information sources that we discovered and unprecedented live-streamed war reporting by heroic Palestinian, Jewish, and other journalists and medical witnesses on the ground during the battles have been a Godsend. It is said that more journalists have been deliberately killed during this conflict than during any conflict since at least WWII.
This is our daily profession, but we also realize we must strive to develop the attitude towards the critics given to us by Jesus Christ who said on the cross, “forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” It has admittedly been difficult at times, but we might have responded the same as the harsh critics if we had not asked questions, researched and learned what we did.
Primary purpose of this article series
This article series is an attempt to share with you the most important things we have learned that have most enlightened us on the conflict.
Prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, most of us knew little about the tiny, but militarily and politically powerful nation of Israel. We tended to marvel how it managed to keep winning its battles against seemingly overwhelming forces from neighbouring Muslim nations and “terrorists” from within and outside its borders. It was amazing how skillful the Israelis have been at fighting wars and developing the most advanced modern weaponry and intelligence gathering systems.
We also saw Israel as a religious “nation of the Jews” fighting against frequent attacks which we assumed were the result of rabid “antisemitism,” and that all Jews were strongly supportive of Israel’s actions and celebrated its many victories over inferior enemies.
As one of the two LifeSiteNews co-founders, I have made certain that no comments or articles indicating antisemitic views are ever allowed on our website. Those who make those comments are often upset with that policy, but we disregard the complaints and consistently adhere to our principles.
However, I now realize that criticism of Zionism and the actions of its alleged “nation of the Jews”, a phrase I will explain later, has mostly not been antisemitic.
The large majority of LifeSite staff are faithful Catholics. Antisemitism is incompatible with our faith and a serious sin.
Concerns quickly developed about the “nation of the Jews.” Some of us originally had no idea that numerous secular and orthodox religious Jews and rabbis, and Middle Eastern Catholic and other Christian leaders, are highly critical of Israel and its Zionist ideology.
Most important of all, many of us were almost totally unaware of the great suffering and violence that mostly innocent indigenous Muslims, and even some Christian and orthodox religious Jews, have endured since 1948 from the more extremist Zionists who came to Palestine. They stole and occupied Palestinian Muslim homes and lands and oppressed them in the “world’s largest open-air prison” in Gaza and other similar regions in Israel.
We were exposed to frequent, high-profile reports on Islamic terrorist actions against civilians, which, of course, any humane person must condemn. Still, we had no idea that Israeli Zionists also committed numerous terrorist acts, starting with the 1948 Nakba, that killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. I don’t recall reading about those in newspapers, in school and college textbooks or watching programs or news reports about them. This, we now know, was deliberate.
This series of articles is intended to address all of the above and lay to rest false claims that LifeSite and several of its journalists are “antisemitic, “pro-Hamas,” “pro-terrorist,” not aware of the dangers of militant Islam and that we did not condemn the horrific Oct. 7, 2023 attack Israelis endured that day.
I will first set the stage of the series with comments about a number of other key, surprising facts learned about what many of us thought was a democratic, religious Jewish nation respectful of Christians and those of other faiths who have lived in Palestine for a few thousand years. l will then move on to begin the most crucial, enlightening, and extensive quoting from a wide variety of religious and non-religious Jewish critics of Israel and its Zionist ideology.
Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
