The world sees Gaza through the lens of curated sympathy – smoke trails from missile strikes, wounded children, crumbled buildings – rendered by the media and United Nations. The headlines scream “siege” and “occupation,” and the images are carefully framed to elicit tears, not questions. For them, Gaza is a tragedy.
But Israelis? They see something very different.
They see a terrorist enclave. A society ruled by Hamas – not just tolerated but elected – with a charter calling for genocide against Jews. They see neighbors who have fired over 30,000 rockets at them since Israel left Gaza in 2005, and who used humanitarian aid to dig terror tunnels and stockpile weapons.
Israelis are haunted by October 7, 2023 – the day when 1,200 of their people were butchered. Burned alive. Shot in their homes. Raped in front of their families. And they remember what came next: polls showing 75% of Gazans supported the massacre. The popularity of other Palestinian Arab terrorist groups skyrocketed as well, including Islamic Jihad, al Aqsa Brigade and al Qassam. This wasn’t some fringe radical cell that commited the vile pogrom – this was public approval for mass murder. It was the fulfillment of their long-standing desire to attack Jewish civilians inside of Israel since 2000.
They also see something deeper: three-quarters of Gazans consider themselves “refugees” living in temporary homes. Not because of displacement from this war but because they believe they’re entitled to homes inside Israel. They don’t see Gaza as their future – they see Tel Aviv.
To the United Nations, Gaza is a moral play where Israel is always cast as the villain. They see Gaza not as a failure of Palestinian leadership, not as a society hijacked by jihad, but as a tragedy authored entirely by Israel. Why? Because Israel won’t allow these “refugees” to move into the homes of Israeli Jews – the very homes where grandparents fled in 1948 after five Arab armies attacked the new Jewish state.
The world has condemned Israel for responding “disproportionately” to the October 7 massacre. The UN saw Israeli counterstrikes as war crimes, not defense. They ignored the slaughter of Israeli children and focused on fuel shortages in Gaza. They accused Israel of starvation, ignoring the trucks of aid Israel itself let in, even while its soldiers were under fire. They paid scant lip service to Israeli hostages kept in tunnels by Hamas, viewing them as collateral to Israel’s ongoing “Nakba”.
The Arab and Muslim world is not fooled but is not helping. They don’t see Gazans as brothers and sisters in need of refuge. They see them as Palestinians – a distinct, useful political weapon. If Gazans were Syrians, they would’ve been taken in by now. But they’re not. They’re left to fester – a long-term tool to weaken and delegitimize the Jewish state.
Even in America, Gaza has become a kind of geopolitical Rorschach test. Leaders like Donald Trump and Jared Kushner see opportunity: beachfront real estate with the potential to be the Singapore of the Middle East. A future riviera. But that future depends on changing a mentality – one that for decades has been more obsessed with destroying Israel than building Gaza.
Because this is the reality: Gaza could have been Dubai. It had the backing of the international community, billions in aid, and a chance to chart its own path. Instead, it chose jihad. It chose hate. It chose martyrdom over medicine, tunnels over technology, indoctrination over innovation.
The world sees rubble. Death. Tragedy. Not on both sides; for Palestinians.
They can’t see the Israeli hostages through their clouded moral lenses. They don’t see the Jewish parents still waiting for their children. They don’t see the decades of restraint Israel exercised before finally saying “enough”. They are caught in an empathy swamp and have mentally baptised Gazans as martyrs instead of genocidal jihadists.
The Global South sees Gaza not just as another flashpoint – but as a pawn in a bigger game. The narrative is not just about “liberation” but “redistribution.” From peace talks to class war. Israel, to them, is just the first domino in toppling the Western-led world order.
Gaza isn’t just a local issue anymore. It’s global. It’s ideological. And for Israelis, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
In this backdrop of viewpoints, an international conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York will take place from June 17 to 20 co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. The Global North will join the Global South in trying to find near-term and longer-term solutions to the 100-year Arab-Israeli conflict.
In this Coliseum, the General Assembly serves as the unruly crowd seeking the torture of the Jewish State, while the Security Council acts as caesar empowered with the pen to draft international law. Will the United States protect Israel in such forum on the heels of Trump’s visit to the Gulf? Will Trump seek to trade an unwinding of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 to get Israel to agree to short-term and longer term movements towards a permanent divorce between local Jews and Arabs?
Israel was blind to the October 7 attack. Does it see what the world sees in Gaza now and the positions being orchestrated for the June U.N. conference? Will the modern blind Samson bring down the house if it only hears calls for its demise and cannot see a path to live in peace?
Related articles:
The Distant Fantasy Of Two States Living Side By Side In Today’s Reality (August 2024)
The Three “Two-State Solution”s (December 2023)
The Asynchronous Audience At Jihadists’ Auto-da-Fe (November 2023)
Palestinians Utterly Fail Two Tests: Oslo Accords And Gaza Disengagement (August 2023)
{Reposted from the author’s blog}
