How is it that* Hamas attacks Israel first* Hezbollah attacks Israel first* Iranian backed Syrian groups attack Israel first* The Houthis shoot rockets at Israel firstAnd Israel is framed as the aggressor?
There were hundreds of furious responses, most saying that Hamas' pogrom was a reaction to Israeli actions and Israel was the original aggressor, that "history didn't start October 7." (I even saw one person made a poster twisting even these facts against Israel with the caption, "Only Israel can bomb four countries and still be perceived as the victim.")
To which I responded:
To the idiots who say Israel started - either in Jerusalem over the past few years, or in 1967, or in 1948. No doubt you would also claim that the Jews started the riots in 1929 as well.
Some reacted with astonishment that I should bring up 1929 - ancient history - when thousands of Palestinians are being murdered now. In other words, some people who say history didn't start October 7 also say history started on October 8 when one takes them at their word and looks at history.
Others responded that Jewish "colonialism" started before 1929 - implying massacres of Jewish rabbis, women and children was justified.
In other words, no matter what argument they use, they lose. But their attempts to justify the most horrific crimes prove their antisemitism.
I looked at Wikipedia's entry on the 1929 massacres, and found a "reason" for them I had never seen before: Challah covers.
For some time, Jewish institutions of Jerusalem had given their supporters abroad items such as Challah covers and Passover Seder tablecloths featuring imagery of the Dome of the Rock either below or emblazoned with Jewish symbolism such as the Star of David and the Temple menorah. Zionist literature published throughout the world had also used provocative, Judaized imagery of the Dome of the Rock. One Zionist publication featuring a Jewish flag atop the Dome of the Rock was picked up and redistributed by Arab propagandists.
Here is one of the challah covers from Jews in Jerusalem circa 1925, where the Dome of the Rock is shown behind the Kotel (Western Wall) which is featured.
Even as early as 1863, way before modern Zionism, the Dome of the Rock is depicted in a challah cover designed in Jerusalem (detail):
Yet here is how antisemitic site Palestine Remembered characterizes another covering:
There is not even a hint of a desire to destroy the Dome of the Rock shown here. The Hebrew quotes the Psalm 137:5 "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning." Under that it says "The place of the Temple." Which it is.
The same site shows another picture, not sure whether it is also a challah cover, a picture for the wall or maybe a Simchat Torah flag.
It also shows the Dome of the Rock as the holy spot, as a place for veneration, and there is nothing close to a call for its destruction. If anything, the Jews who drew these pictures are showing extreme respect for the building. One cannot imagine Jews publishing pictures of churches to beautify their homes but this Muslim site was a central decorative motif in thousands of Jewish homes in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Arabs behind the site are upset at the Dome being shown underneath a Temple menorah.
So even today, Arabs are claiming that table coverings and other innocuous illustrations by Jews who consider the Temple Mount to be the most sacred spot in the world are justifications for murdering Jews.
No matter how far-fetched, today's antisemites will always find some supposed crime that Jews did to justify their being slaughtered. In fact, Mahmoud Abbas has used that same logic to justify the Holocaust, more than once, saying that how Jews acted brought it about. And it is the same logic that blames events in Jerusalem, or a "sirge" that had largely already been ended before October 7, for mass murder and rape and kidnapping of Jews.
There is no daylight between antisemitism and today's anti-Zionism. And you can see it in a challah cover.
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