When you come across someone on social media who says something akin to "Israel is the aggressor" or "Israel is an occupier"...just know that this canard was not invented yesterday or in 2009, during Cast Lead, or in 2000, during the Intifada.
It began in 1967 and its originators were the Soviets, namely the KGB, who trained then Fatah leader Yasser Arafat, in everything from intelligence and propaganda to nation-building and media strategy.
Above: Yasser Arafat attending the funeral of his KGB mentor in Moscow
This strategy was part and parcel of a general policy in the Soviet Union towards Jews and anything Jewish...or as they called it "Zionistic Activities".
This included suppression and imprisonment of any Soviet Jews who dared to learn Torah, Hebrew and Jewish history...most of which was done underground. (but that's a story for another time)
The Soviet government knew that the Jews who had no relatives in the US, were aspiring to escape to Israel, which was by the 60s and 70s, a tentative "ally" of the US...the Soviets' Cold War foil.
And so they found a willing protege in Arafat, whom they taught how to build a nation from a patchwork of tribes from across the Arab world, who by the hand of G-d happened to end up in the Levant aka the Land of Israel...they included Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Iraqis, Yemenites, Saudis and Kurds.
These tribes were (and still are) scattered across this Land...in places like Hevron, Nablus (Shechem), Jenin, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Qalqilya, Nazereth, Kfar Kana, Jaffo, etc
For many years, even after the KGB and Arafat established this fictional "iCloud Nation" (Steve Jobs father is Lebanese, but was still a California school boy back then ;) ), these tribes hardly intermarried.
But I digress.
Apart from nation-building, what they taught him, first and foremost, was PROPAGANDA.
Specifically, how to get sympathy from the world. And this would become be a very VERY long game.
As you can see, the game continues...and social media, people's short attention spans and college campus propaganda in Western nations have become like nitrous oxide for their purposes.
Coupled with the fact that tiny "defenseless" Israel has gone from being the underdog and the darling of Western Europe, to the big bad aggressor and America's "Little Satan"...with Iron Dome and $3 billion in cash that gets "laundered" back into the America defense industry.
(definitely NOT into the Israeli economy)
So here we are, in the year 2023 (5783) and Israel is now officially the "aggressor".
But this took over 50 years of repetitive propaganda for a better part of the "civilized" world to believe it and then act on it.
But the Arab world is known for its patience. They can wait, for decades if need be...and they have.
Current PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has picked up the baton, with his PhD from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he published a dissertation entitled 'The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism', where he essentially denies the Holocaust. He also has a working fluency in Russian.
Ironically enough, Jews in the West, who believe this canard, seem to be subscribing to the wrong religion...ie, the one that says you must "turn the other cheek".
Conversely, American gentiles who support Israel, seem to somehow understand the Talmudic principle:
"If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first". (Sanhedrin 72a-b)
Therefore, if were ARE in fact the “aggressor”...so be it.
As Mordechai Kedar famously says:
"In the Middle East, peace belongs to the INVINCIBLE."
PS...my grandmother's sister, who's patronymic name was Sonya Yisraelovna, was jokingly called Sonya Aggressorovna by friends and family. ;)
Relieved of the Soviet Boot, how many Israeli Jews pore over the Torah today?