Ben Barney

Listen, @ComicDaveSmith, from the very first time I heard of you, when you "debated" @DouglasKMurraym, you’ve consistently proven how ignorant you are about everything related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 🧵In this thread, I will try to educate you, and the useful idiots who think you're an authority on the subject. I’m Jordanian. I lived in the region. I was shaped by this conflict. I’m a former Muslim who understands its true nature. I don’t have high hopes that you’ll change your mind, but maybe those who blindly listen to you will. (1) A brief breakdown of the history of the conflict. By the late 18th century, Jewish communities were present in the land, not in overwhelming numbers, but they had maintained a continuous presence. The land was not heavily populated, only a mix of Arabs, Jews, Christians, Druze, and others living in scattered communities with no real national identity. There were no "Palestinians." No "Lebanese." No "Syrians" in the modern sense. These identities didn’t exist yet. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, didn’t start this movement because of some divine mandate. His motivation wasn’t biblical, his intent wasn't colonial, it was survival. European pogroms and antisemitism were tearing Jewish communities apart, and he saw the need for a Jewish homeland as a matter of life and death. By the late 19th century, Jews began migrating back to the land in greater numbers, legally purchasing land from absentee Ottoman landlords. They weren’t invading with weapons, they were buying property and building something out of nothing. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909. Haifa’s port was developed between 1910 and 1912. Swamps were drained, fields were cultivated, cities were built. As Jewish settlements grew, so did Arab migration into those areas, because the Jews were bringing jobs, infrastructure, and healthcare. The Arabs weren’t being displaced. They were moving toward Jewish communities because life was better there. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised a Jewish homeland, wasn’t unique. The French also backed Lebanese Christians, promising them a state. The Brits promised Iraq to Arab allies, and Jordan to Prince Abdallah. The Europeans were trying to implement their nation-state model in a region that had never operated that way. For the Jews, the British Mandate was an opportunity. They had been buying land, building cities, and now had international recognition of their efforts. They weren’t doing anything different from the Lebanese, Syrians, or Iraqis, everyone was scrambling to stake their claim in the post-Ottoman chaos. But for Muslims, this was existential. For the first time in Islamic history, there was no caliphate. The Ottoman sultan was gone. The Muslim world was lost, leaderless, and to add insult to injury, a Jewish state was rising in the heart of the Middle East. Lebanon, a Christian-majority state at the time, got the same hostility. But the Christians eventually caved under pressure. The Jews didn’t. The Muslim Brotherhood saw an opportunity and took it, using religious fury to rally Arabs against the Jews. Before the 1940s, "Palestinian" didn’t mean "Arab." It meant anyone, Jew or Arab, who lived in the British Mandate of Palestine. Jews in Tel Aviv were called Palestinians. But the Brotherhood rebranded it as an exclusively Arab identity, erasing the Jewish history tied to the land. The Jews, like the Lebanese and Syrians, fought to shake off British colonial rule. They declared independence in 1948. The Arabs rejected every peace deal, starting with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have given them their own state alongside a Jewish state, all the way up to Their rejection of Camp David in 2000, when Israel offered them 96% of the West Bank and Gaza, and 4% of Israel. They never wanted a state. They wanted to erase Israel. That’s why every single offer was turned down. Arab leaders didn’t actually care about the Palestinians. Egypt, Jordan, and Syria all used the Palestinian cause for their own political gain. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt flirted with recognizing Israel when he needed Western weapons. When the U.S. denied him, he turned to the Soviets and ramped up anti-Israel rhetoric. Saudi King Faisal saw Nasser as a threat and pumped money into the Muslim Brotherhood’s causes, not out of love for Palestinians, but to undermine his Arab rival. And the so-called Palestinian flag was originally used in the failed 1958 Jordan-Iraq federation, before it was repurposed as a Palestinian nationalist symbol in 1963. There was no Palestinian nation before that, just a movement searching for branding. The Arabs didn’t lose their homeland in 1948. They lost a war they started to take one that was never theirs. This was never about land. It was never about occupation. If it were, why did Muslim-majority nations persecute Jews long before Zionism? Why were 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands in 1948? Why did Muhammad himself declare that “no two religions can exist in Arabia”? Because this isn’t a geopolitical dispute. It’s a religious and ideological war. The Jews built a nation from nothing, reclaimed their homeland, and refused to be erased. And that’s why this conflict rages on, because Israel exists, and for many in the Islamic world, that is an unforgivable offense.