Antisemitism is at a 46 year high. Blame mainstream media and uniformed citizens.
The Dunning-Kruger effect... on steroids
TAT readers,
Well my friends, today’s essay will anger many and on both sides of the aisle. Antisemitism is now pervasive in the US and rapidly increasing globally, largely due to Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. Not only is most mainstream media responsible for the threatening uptick, but Americans especially should be deeply ashamed. The left is always bashing the right and legitimately so for their addiction to conspiracy theories but in the case of Israel, those on the left are every bit as guilty. Personally, I’ve had enough and today I will say so bluntly. There are several components to and causes of the disgraceful behavior we are witnessing by Americans who proclaim to love Israel, but are cheerleading this cruel, millennia-old bigotry like it’s their favorite sports team.
"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills." - Dunning-Kruger Effect - Psychology Today - By Devon Frye - April 24th, 2026
Both Dems and Republicans are guilty and make for a perfect example, of the the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which simply states that those with no or limited education and experience, believe themselves to be experts on complex topics. The ongoing situation in the Middle East currently revolving around Israel and Iran, is but the latest episode in the age-old waves of virulent antisemitism. These self-proclaimed experts believe that Israel is “genocidal,” an occupier, a cruel task-master for the Arab populations that have been redefined in my lifetime, as Palestinians. Oh how perfectly ignorant these haters are. Today, I seek to dispel much of the steer manure emanating from the mouths of these ill-informed and dangerous propagandists. This issue is not one-sided and while that Israel has a role in the casualties of innocents, the truth is quite far from what they are being accused of.
Before I continue, I want to make something stridently clear; I want peace and security for both Israel and the Palestinians who have been exhaustively abused, tortured and murdered by Hamas, Hizbollah and other violent extremist armies doing the bidding of Iran, Russia and to some extent China. As I wrote in an early essay of a 26 part series on the war in Gaza, there is plenty of blame to go around. As the name of this publication clearly indicates, I will tell you the truth about this dangerous trend, without bias. It’s up to readers to make up their own mind. I do this because the mainstream media has been lying to all of us since October 7th, 2023. Between those swallowing their lies whole, and global media oligarchs funding and disseminating the propaganda, thousands more will die on all sides of this equation. Anyone mouthing these lies, will share some of the blame for future victims.
First the basics
There are countless arguments for and against Israel’s right to the tiny bit of land they hold in their historical homeland. For roughly 2,000 years, Jews around the world were excluded from governing their own nation. Both Jews and Arabs have lived on the land, for far longer than that. Most history books will put Jewish existence on what today is called Israel, at around 4,000 years. The Jewish calendar, goes back 5,786 years. Islam appeared in around 510 C.E., and Christianity of course at 2026 years ago. All three, plus many other religions, have lived in the historical state ever since. All have a right to live in what today is known as the “Jewish State,” but like every other country on earth, they must abide by the laws of the country.
During the post WW I occupation of the region by Britain, every single inhabitant, regardless of religion or ethnicity, had the word, “Palestinian” written across their official ID papers. This should put the matter of name to rest. Yes, there are ancient historical name issues as well, but they have little to no relevance to what everyone likes to argue about today. To simplify, mostly Jews and Arabs have lived there from a time predating any of the religions we recognize today. Both the original Arabs and Jews are considered “Semitic,” simply because both languages come from a specific group of languages. Both Islam and Judaism are comprised of several ethnicities, and not all Arabs are Muslim anymore than all Israelis are Jewish.
Today, most people in the region practice some form of Judaism, Islam or Christianity, although several other religions call the region home too. Within Israel, all are free to practice their own religion, while that in many of the other regional Arab states, there are limitations, some official and some biased-based. Our modern conflicts began sometime after the beginning of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century. For those babbling propagandists spewing the word Zionism like they had just bitten into a rotten apple, the word simply refers to the holy mountain in Jerusalem where the Al-Aqsa Mosque now stands. Zionism is simply about Jews going home with the intent of establishing a Jewish state in their original homeland.
There has never been a time when Jews have not lived in what today is Israel. This vision was realized in 1948, when the UN saw fit after the Holocaust, to designate part of then British Palestine, as the new state of Israel. As you can see from the map at the time of Partition below, Israel was only about 10 miles wide between the sea and Jordan next door. An indefensible strip of land that with modern weaponry would be of no value for defense against the perpetual attacks by Israel’s neighbors, beginning from the very first minutes of Israel’s 1948 statehood. For the record, the US administration under Harry S. Truman, played a major role in the success of the UN vote. This would become the beginning of the special relationship we have with Israel, although there have been several rough spots in that relationship.
The background provided is barely a thumbnail sketch of the complicated history of the region and its people, but is enough to better understand what follows about antisemitism.
Israel is not committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
There are several ways to approach this topic but I will only focus on those I feel most critical to this essay. For a “spoiler alert,” the genocide claim is patently false by any standard. There are varying interpretations to the term genocide, depending on which International Law is being discussed. I will use the UN version here for the sake of discussion. Genocide is discussed in Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide. Even in the UN version, sometimes framed as a bit more ambiguous than other international standards, clearly states that there must be “intent” to the actions enumerated in the quote below. To believe Israel has intent to commit the five named crimes below, is to suspend belief in reality. No facts support the claim of willful “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
"The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide. The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements: - A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively: - Killing members of the group - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group - Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part - Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group - Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group - Genocide - United Nations, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect
The reasons that I can say with full confidence that Israel has no intent to destroy the Palestinian people is that as of 2022, 21.1 percent of Israeli residents are Palestinians. Also, there are still over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. The accusation fails with even a cursory look.
Arabs represent one-fifth of Israel’s population. Systemic discrimination, outbreaks of communal violence, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to strain their ties with Israel’s Jewish majority. - Arabs comprise just over 20 percent of Israel’s population. The vast majority are citizens, while those in Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital, are considered “permanent residents.” - Arab citizens have the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis, but they tend to live in poorer cities, have less formal education, and face other challenges that some experts attribute to structural discrimination. - Arab political parties have long struggled to gain representation in Israel’s government, and many Arabs have expressed alarm at the leadership of right-wing Jewish politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. - What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel - Council on Foreign Relations - October 26, 2023
As you can see on the map below, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens, live in the north of Israel and not in the West Bank and Gaza, where there is a constant hotbed of terrorism of violence by Islamic violent extremists, against their own people. This is not to say that there are not problems though. Arab Israelis often live in poorer cities and have less education. There has long been a serious debate about whether this is attributed to systemic bias, much like we have against minorities here in the US. An additional problem is that many Israelis, often far-right American Jews move to the settlements in the West Bank and behave as badly as American far-right violent extremist groups like, neo-Nazis, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3%ers etc. There is regular violence against the Arabs living adjacent to these far-right settlements and the inhabitants suffer greatly from the extreme, right-wing violence.
At the beginning of the October 7th war, there were roughly 2.1 million Arabs living in Gaza. Despite the war beginning in October of 2023, Gaza’s population grew in 2024, according to CIA analysis. We never saw the scenes we have witnessed where there is actual massive starvation such as in parts of Africa, showing tens of thousands of Gazans dead from starvation, as mainstream news would have us believe. I’m not saying that life is good for those in Gaza because it’s not. Their life is hell, but the crocodile tears from the media, often without the slightest credible source, was and continues to be overtly dishonest. This is why it is called propaganda.
Now let’s get down to the sorting the whole casualty claims by the known propagandists at the Hamas Health Ministry and numbers being published by the UN. First and foremost, I was well-trained and by some of the very best intelligence analysts regarding the insidious propaganda wing of Hamas, of which the Health Ministry is a part. They have their own production company, actors, equipment etc., as if they were a Hollywood studio. Much of what is trafficked on social media platforms, is derived directly from Hamas’ propaganda dissemination networks. Yet Americans, oblivious to propaganda and how it works, share adversarial propaganda like it was some sort of award they won playing on the local softball team.
As for the casualty numbers themselves, most military estimates from a variety of global sources put the strength of Hamas in Gaza between 20,000 and 95,000 prior to the war. The 20,000 is low based on the amount of support offered by Iran and other variables. I believe the 95 is also ridiculous. By extrapolating from multiple sources, I would conservatively put the number closer to 45,000. At last check, the number reported for total Palestinian, non-combatant casualties in Gaza around 67,000. This number as we all now know, does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. As for IDF and US intelligence estimates, I am hesitant to believe either considering that October 7th was a massive intelligence failure, not dissimilar from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.
At any rate, the numbers game could be argued in a variety of different ways and we may never know the truth with any certainty. None of the casualty figures account for the deaths of Palestinian non-combatants at the hands of Hamas as human shields, summary executions, failure to allow families to leave north Gaza for protected areas etc., etc. Israel operates with an even higher standard regarding warning prior to attacks, than the US. They have even gone so far as to text individual innocents, call them, employ radio and all other means to clear target areas of civilians. When innocent Palestinians remain anyway, it’s most often because Hamas combatants will not let them.
In new reporting, there are an alleged 40,000 fighters again in Gaza, after nearly three years of war. Again, few statistics from this war are verifiable with any accuracy. Still, the world blames Israel for all of the casualties. Terrorism doesn’t end. It just evolves and there are other mostly Sunni Muslim VEOs (violent extremist organizations) also in Gaza and supportive of Hamas. Hamas and their supporters never disarmed as required by the faux peace deal. They will not stop attacking Israel or their own people.
The UN and other NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) are complicit in the casualty chaos as well and when challenged, a May of 2024 report shows, they had to revise the number of women and children killed by half. This is not the only problem with the UN in Gaza. Hamas, like most terrorist organizations use what are called, “protected sites” like schools, hospitals, Mosques etc. for military operations. Many of the several hundred kilometers of Hamas’ tunnel system in Gaza, had outlets inside of these alleged protected spaces. In many cases, UN workers knew that they were working right above operational tunnels for Hamas operatives. They said nothing. A new report now shows that Israel had complained to humanitarian NGOs operating in Gaza, that they were using the falsely high casualty numbers to boost fundraising, ignoring the antisemitism in their bid for donations.
Then there is the Hamas playbook that intentionally creates “collateral damage” or CIVCAS (civilian casualties) for the purpose of propaganda.
The IDF, Israeli Defense Force, has been observed first-hand in their operations in Gaza, by John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. I agree with John that what we see in Gaza is not genocide and again, because there is no intent by Israel to annihilate all Gazan Palestinians, or even a significant percentage. I also agree with him that in war, there will be individuals or maybe even a small unit or so that is guilty of war crimes. I have no doubt that this also occurred on some level in Gaza. This is an accurate assessment that I can easily get behind, having spent a year in Baghdad during the second worst year of the two-decade war. Urban combat comes with extraordinary risks for civilians and combatants alike. Bad things happen. Sometimes, horrible things happen. Both the US and Israeli forces hold their troops accountable for when, “horrible things happen.” These bad things normally occur in the heat of battle and without premeditation. Soldiers carry the weight of these painful events for the rest of their lives. Of course, there are bad apples too.
To be clear, I am making no excuses for those who committed war crimes. I am simply saying that as horrible as such activities are, they are still a tiny minority of the casualties. Ironically, mainstream media has ignored the Israeli casualties from almost the beginning of the war. The only real respite was when there were hostage releases, but those headlines shared the front page with ignorant and unsupported accusations of genocide against the IDF. Media coverage hasn’t only been poor, but has been in my opinion, overtly antisemitic due to pro-Palestinian and Hamas favoritism. I scarcely have words for most of these alleged news sources. Ask yourself… how often do we read or watch news that treats Hamas as badly as the IDF? Apparently our mainstream news moguls are pro-Hamas.
In years past, when people would ask me about good news sources, I would generally recommend the AP, Reuters and the BBC. After reading Reuters and the BBC’s decidedly anti-Israeli coverage of the war in Gaza, I will never read either again. In fact, from my special edition on the war in Gaza, with the 26 essays, five were detailed looks at the acutely dishonest reporting. I have posted them below for those with deeper interest. Any honest person will be horrified at how our favorite news sources sold-out Israel and still does. That dishonest coverage with their sensational claims of mass civilian casualties based on propaganda sources, was in my opinion the basis for the worldwide wave of antisemitism generating additional threats for Israel and Jews, globally.
Has all media, good and bad, forgotten how to report with facts and context?
Mainstream news outlets are borderline antisemitic in their reporting about the war in Gaza.
And the threats to the innocents in Israel and Gaza, have now materialized into not only antisemitism, but Islamophobia, already a threat to Muslims within western nations. At the height of the war, all mainstream media used blaring headlines with the casualty figures from the Hamas Health Ministry and the parts of a complicit UN to sell their reporting. Never mind that the figures were false and never drew a distinction between fighters and non-combatants. In the US, Islamophobia once again spiked alongside of antisemitism, inciting violence against Muslims while concurrently, generating the highest spike in antisemitism in decades.
Miss and disinformation about the war, dangerously impacts both Jews and Muslims. What the hell is wrong with the leadership of the 6 media entities that control nearly all media in some manner or other? How disgusting that they are willing to risk death and destruction of innocents just to increase their bottom lines?
The so-called big six multi-media conglomerates, control most of what we all see, read, hear or watch. As we can see in Gaza, Ukraine and other violent conflicts around the world, these media companies are profiting at the expense of human lives.
As we look at these six media monsters one must ask themselves, why are these thuggish corporations so antisemitic or are they simply selling Jewish and Muslim lives for profit? There are even better questions for all of us if we are to ever have peace in the region or for that matter… in any region. On both sides of the wars in the Middle East, innocent human beings are dying and suffering immensely, and all based on lies and conspiracy theories that continue to stir the pot of violence. The bottom line in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and the rest, is that if we do not dispense with these massive terrorist armies built, trained and equipped by villainous nation-states like Iran, Russia and China, no one will be safe… ever.
As for the antisemitism, both the US right and left now have disgraceful agendas for Israel. The right, now based on Christian Nationalism instead of Christianity, only loves Israel for their own apocalyptic purposes, not because they love Jews. The left, often called “bleeding heart” liberals, are in such a hurry to help everyone and everything that they have allowed themselves to be swayed by propaganda, not common-sense and facts. Their now deep commitment to calling Israel genocidal in order to demonstrate their good intentions, are now tacitly supporting Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran. Both sides have missed the point. Employing antisemitism based on lies is little different from behaving as Hamas, who has a decades-long commitment to actual genocide against the Jewish state.
No long-term good comes from decisions based on lies. The only way to solve problems is to put all of the facts on the table and then seek a solution. Any alleged solution based on lies, is a ticking time bomb, that will take innocent lives wantonly and randomly. War is truly hell and it is always the non-combatants in a combat zone that pay the heaviest price. How about we stop acting like social warriors for good if in fact, our intended solutions are all based on falsehoods? Truth is hard and most human beings wish to be the “nice person.” We must all learn that being nice requires honesty. Being “nice” is killing innocent Israelis and Palestinians.
War is hell and as cold as this sounds, when wars occur, we are faced with one of the lowest rungs on the ladder of humanity. I am grateful that most never see or experience it. There is no “war-lite” to assuage the sensitivities of those who have not experienced it. Decisions must be made and there is a cost to every single one. Israel has been under attack or threat, every day since her statehood. A thousand or more rockets from terrorists a year land on Israeli soil. Children are taught things that no child should experience. This is part of daily life for all Israelis. Going to war with Hamas in Gaza was their only option to defend herself and her citizens. Now, all of the armchair quarterbacks are criticizing those painful decisions. Sure, with Bibi and his far-right coalition leading Israel, some of those decisions don’t meet my standards, but I’m not in his shoes. He won’t escape this war untouched and prison may be waiting for him. Time will tell.
As for Israel, unfortunately, her Jewish residents have a sad few thousand years of dealing with genocidal antisemitism based on lies. She will survive but at what cost? I will stand up for her and her people, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any of the other religions calling her home.
My very best for your weekend,
Paul