Zionist Myth #2: There Was A Ceasefire Prior To Oct. 7
Zionists often claim that there was a ceasefire in place in 2023 that Hamas' Oct. 7 attack broke. This claim is 180 degrees opposite from reality.
One of the most frequent claims of supporters of the Israeli government is that the “war between Israel and Hamas” began on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its surprise attack on military bases and settlements surrounding Gaza, and that this attack breached an existing ceasefire. I’ve never seen any information indicating that such a “ceasefire” ever existed. Gaza, the tiny 140 square mile strip of land on the southern coast of Palestine that is home to 2.3 million of the 5 million Palestinians who reside in the Palestinian territories, has been surrounded by the Israeli military and under a state of siege in which outside supplies of food, water, medicine, and other commodities have been severely limited by the Israeli regime for nearly two decades. Its residents essentially live in a giant open-air prison, only allowed to leave with the permission of the Israeli government for extraordinary circumstances such as a need for emergency medical treatment, and sometimes not even then. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the bantustan-like patchwork of territories interspersed with illegal Israeli settlements where the other 2.7 million Palestinians who remain in the occupied territories live, Palestinians are being violently pushed out of their homes and off their land by settlers, with the support of the Israeli government, at a record pace. And two months prior to Oct. 7, Israel was holding over 1200 Palestinians prisoner without any charges. Moreover, the West Bank has been under Israeli
military occupation since1967, and although Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza and dismantled its settlements there in 2005, it is nonetheless still considered militarily occupied by the United Nations because Israel still exercises effective control over it.
Does this sound like a ceasefire? Personally, I’ve never heard of a ceasefire in which one party to a conflict controls the populace of the other party through military occupation. As one would expect during a military occupation, acts of overt violence against Palestinians were frequent during the first 9 months of 2023. As recently as October 6, a Palestinian was killed by settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara. There were also widely reported killings of Palestinians on October 5, September 24, September 22, September 19, September 5, and on many other occasions prior to October 7 during 2023, which was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the UN began keeping records in 2005 only halfway through the year. Similarly, Israel killed dozens of people in Gaza prior to October 7. Altogether, during the “ceasefire” that Zionists allege existed in 2023 prior to October 7, Israel killed more than 200 Palestinians, making it the deadliest year this century other than years when Israel engaged in extensive military operations in Gaza (2008-2009, 2014, and 2021), killing hundreds (in 2021) to more than 2000 (in 2014) in a matter of weeks. Even during the Great March of Return of 2018-2019, an act of nonviolent protest in which Gaza residents merely approached the fortified fence preventing them from leaving Gaza, Israeli snipers killed more than 200 people. In short, the claim that there was a ceasefire in effect that Gaza-based armed groups violated when they launched their October 7 surprise attack is bullshit! Even if it were true, claiming that Israel’s genocidal response in which tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million starved and rendered homeless is somehow justified is analogous to an abuser justifying beating up his wife with “She started it!” But it isn’t.