Victor Davis Hanson is not Jewish. He is a renowned American classicist, military historian, author, and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution - making his fact-based defense of Israel all the more significant.
In one of his recent interviews, Hanson gave a fascinating analysis of four accusations repeatedly made against Israel - apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
His conclusion was clear: These slogans collapse when confronted with historical facts.
Apartheid?
Approximately two million Arab citizens live in Israel with the right to vote, serve in parliament, study at universities, practice their religion, and participate throughout Israeli society.
Meanwhile, many of the countries accusing Israel of apartheid officially privilege Islam and severely restrict religious conversion, minority communities, and basic freedoms.
Settler colonialism?
The Jewish connection to the land of Israel is supported by nearly 4,000 years of historical, archaeological, linguistic, and biblical evidence.
The Jewish people did not arrive in their ancestral homeland as foreign colonizers. They returned to the land from which foreign empires had repeatedly expelled them.
Meanwhile, Arab armies conquered enormous portions of the Middle East and North Africa. The Ottoman conquest transformed Hagia Sophia - once the greatest church in Christendom - into a mosque. Yet those historical conquests are rarely described as settler colonialism.
Ethnic cleansing?
Where were the demonstrations when Turkey expelled Greeks from northern Cyprus and moved Turkish settlers into the occupied territory?
Where was the outrage when Azerbaijan drove more than 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homes in Nagorno-Karabakh?
Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani were remarkably quiet.
Genocide?
When Israel was established, approximately 170,000 Arabs remained within the country. Today, around two million Arab citizens live in Israel, and the Arab share of its population has increased rather than disappeared.
Genocidal regimes do not cause the population they supposedly seek to eliminate to grow dramatically in both number and proportion.
As Hanson explained, many of those accusing Israel are projecting the sins of their own nations, movements, and histories onto one tiny, democratic Jewish state.
Why is Israel judged by a standard applied to no other nation?
The answer is becoming painfully clear - because Israel is predominantly Jewish.
Accusations may travel quickly, but historical facts still matter.
https://x.com/beholdisrael/status/2102020186488385915?s=20
