William Dalrymple piles on the wild claims, that Israel is guilty of “75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation.” It has been 75 years since Israel first had to fight for its survival against those who would destroy it. There have been three more wars of survival — in 1967, 1973, and in 2023-2024 — as well as a half-dozen campaigns against various terror groups, including the PLO, Hamas, PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel was in Gaza from 1967 to 2005, that is, for 38 years, not 75. And it has been in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) since 1967, that is, for 56, not 75 years. As for the claims of “torture” and “rape,” the IDF soldiers do not engage in torture, unless you count requiring captured Gazas to remove their shirts and pants briefly, as “torture.” Physical torture is streng verboten. Nor do the Israeli soldiers engage in rape. In fact, they have been accused by Palestinians of being “racists” precisely because they do not rape Arab women.
What “dispossession” does Dalrymple mean? Could he be referring to the hovels left behind by Arabs before and during the 1948 war, when 690,000 of them were persuaded by Arab broadcasters to leave Mandatory Palestine, which became Israel, in order to get out of the way of the fighting? They were assured that they would soon return with the triumphant Arab armies, but that was not to be. Instead, they remained abroad as refugees. It made no sense for the Israeli government to keep the properties they left behind permanently vacant; they were given by the state to some of the 850,000 Jews who, in the years following Israel’s War of Independence, had had to flee to Israel from Arab lands, leaving behind far more valuable properties than the Arabs had left in Israel.
Dalrymple also mentions the “humiliation” inflicted by the barbarous Israelis on the innocent Palestinians. I don’t know what he is referring to. Is it when Hamas terrorists are taken prisoner and the IDF initially binds them with plastic cuffs and blindfolds them until they can be safely secured in a vehicle or a holding pen? Some of the prisoners are made to remove shirts and pants, briefly, so that the IDF can make sure they are not hiding weapons.
Finally, Dalrymple mentions Israel’s “occupation.” There is not now “occupation” of Gaza, and there has not been since 2005, when every last Israeli – 8,000 of them — was pulled out of the Strip.
And it is an offense against history and the truth for Dalrymple, or anyone, to describe any part of Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) as “occupied.” The League of Nations intended that the Mandate for Palestine, which was in time supposed to become the Jewish National Home and then the Jewish state, would cover all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The League of Nations closed down in 1946, but its successor, the United Nations, in Article 80 (known as the “Jewish people’s article”) of the UN Charter, committed itself to carrying out the terms of any mandates still extant. There was one — the Mandate for Palestine. The territory covered by the Palestine Mandate did not change when the UN succeeded the League of Nations; it still included all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In the 1948 war, however, the Jordanians managed to seize the territory it renamed the “West Bank” (a/k/a Judea and Samaria), and held onto it, as a military occupier that had no lawful claim, until the Six-Day War, when Israel captured all of Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank), and was at long last able to enforce its preexisting claim, based on the territory assigned by the League of Nations to the Mandate for Palestine.
More on Dalrymple’s charges about Israel can be found here:
I find it curious. By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. More than that – it’s not even regionally remarkable.
Hamas’s own figures – not to be relied upon – suggest that around 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October. Most of the international media likes to claim these people are all innocent civilians. In fact, many of the dead will have been killed by the quarter or so of Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that fall short and land inside Gaza.
About those claimed to be “innocent civilians” in Gaza, we now know that quite a few of those “innocents” accompanied Hamas terrorists when they went on their murderous rampage into Israel on October 7. Civilians, too, happily beat the hostages – including naked girls dumped in the back of pick-up trucks — as they were brought back to Gaza by triumphant Hamas operatives. Some of the hostages were taken by Gazan civilians and remain with them still. It is believed that some are being used as sex slaves. We shall eventually know the horrific truth. More than 82% of the civilians in Gaza say they approve of what Hamas did on October 7. Should they be considered “innocent civilians”?
Of His Nastiness William Dalrymple, with his luxurious digs just outside Delhi — “the pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo ‘and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city” — nothing more need be said. He’s out far and in deep. Not waving, but drowning.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Does he still live in Delhi? I thought he lived in Sri Lanka, some years ago. At any rate, he should move to Lahore or Peshawar, where he can enjoy the grandeur of a quasi-Mughal environment up close
bill says
He is the ultimate hang over from the colonial era. BTW why does or did nobody protest about Assad;s genocide of his own people, likewise Saddam’s genocide of the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds with poison gas. Or the genocide of the Christians in Nigeria and neighbouring states. It is only genocide when Israel kills its enemies.who have been trying to kill them since 1948.
tgusa says
” Israel is guilty of “75 years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation.”
That is odd because when I first began to be aware of the world outside of my community I read different. I had access to adult news global content magazines such as National Geographic, US news, Time, etc.In those days those sources were mostly credible. But still, looking back, news with a quiet bias. I read about middle eastern war/wars (islamic/palestinian). Yes, that is what the news called it back then, middle eastern such and such with no mention of islams involvement in all of it. I read about assaults, bombings, kidnappings, aircraft hijackings, terrorism, aimed at uninvolved civilians living any where in the world.
Again and again, the same stuff, committed by the same group. So what rock has this guy been living under that he could come up with that?
Will he tell us that he just didn’t notice, he wasn’t aware, or something else. No, he will stick to his story, you can see it in his face. He just knows he is so much smarter than anyone else.
Ari Dale says
I had no idea who William Dalryemple was / is- why make me google him? Please- no more snobbish assumptions that lowly street Jews in Israel know intellectual elitists by name.
Joe Tyson says
Keep speaking the truth, It always shines through .
Joe Tyson says
His lies are written on his face.
bill says
I had never heard of him so I looked him up (not on Google) He has written a lot of books and received various honours. However he seems not to have bothered to read any history, especially history of the last century, before he spouts his unbased remarks. It just goes to show, as we see in so many people, getting awards and writing novels does not make one erudite. Of course he is blinded by his anti semitism.