I couldn't think of a better way to begin Part II of the answer to this question by quoting from one of my favourite writers, Melanie Phillips. While acknowledging that it is not uncommon for issues to be misunderstood out of ignorance, laziness or indifference, the brilliant former Daily Mail columnist writes:

What is unique about the treatment of Israel is that a conflict subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny should be presented in such a way as to drive out truth and rationality. History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimizers are reversed; logic is suspended, and a fictional narrative now widely accepted as incontrovertible truth. This fundamental error has been spun into a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions. The fraught issue of Israel sits at the epicentre of the West's repudiation of reason.

Many of the errors and misrepresentations about the Middle East conflict not only promote falsehood but turn the truth inside out...In Britain and much of Europe, the mainstream, dominant view among the educated classes is that Israel itself is intrinsically illegitimate.¹

The narrative that Israel has been foisted onto Arab land is now accepted as true in the West. "But it is false," she asserts. Please read her book for a full treatment of this and other issues. It is dynamite, but sadly her views became too strong for the Mail, from what I can gather.

Take the hot potato involving successive wars with Gaza. A Canadian journalist claimed that the facts didn't support the accepted story that a United Nations school was hit by Israeli shells. Writing for the Canadian Globe and Mail, Patrick Martin investigated the shelling that led to the tragic deaths of 43 civilians.

He reported: "Physical evidence and interviews with several eye-witnesses, including a teacher who was in the schoolyard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) compound, no-one in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where all three mortar shells landed. Stories of one or more shells landing inside the schoolyard were inaccurate."²

He added: "While the killing of 43 civilians on the street may itself be grounds for investigation, it falls short of the act of shooting into a schoolyard crowded with refuge-seekers."

Martin's story confirms the under-reported accounts that the Israel Defence Force accurately returned fire to the location from which it was being shelled by Hamas terrorists who were engaging in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to as a double war crime – attacking Israeli civilians whilst hiding behind Palestinian civilians.

More unhelpful propaganda surrounded the boarding in 2010 of an aid flotilla trying to break Israel's blockade on Gaza (introduced for security reasons), which sparked off predictable fury from the world at large when it led to the killing of nine crew members.

As in so many previous cases, the incident was widely portrayed in the media as the bullying IDF overpowering innocent victims who only wished to help ferry much-needed cargo to the stricken Gaza Strip. But the reality was very different. For one thing, Israel is not against such aid getting to Gaza – they are simply trying to ensure that it doesn't include arms destined to be used against them and it seems perfectly reasonable, therefore, that such ships should dock at Israeli ports.

For another, there is no question but that the Israelis came under fierce attack when they boarded the ship. As Malcolm Hedding of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem said: "Any fair-minded person, after viewing the IDF's video footage of the incident, will concede that Israeli commandos were definitely not boarding a ship-full of peaceful activists...for embedded among the passengers were a large number of well-armed militants."³ And in fact it later emerged that these 'activists' were radical Islamic jihadists fully prepared to sacrifice their lives, having left statements to this effect with families and friends. But the international community rushed to condemn Israel before the real facts emerged.

What is Left Unsaid

A few years ago, when the BBC hosted a discussion on growing anti-Semitism in Britain, it was interesting to note that even in the studio there was strong antipathy towards Israel. This became clear when everyone clapped at the mention of "what Israel is doing in Gaza", and yet no-one talks of what Gaza is doing to Israel^.4

The former was a reference to charges of 'war crimes' committed by Israel for apparently targeting civilians while also responding 'disproportionately' to constant attacks from Gaza simply because Israelis lost fewer men than their counterparts in the conflict. But it is rarely, if ever, mentioned that the IDF do something virtually unknown in warfare by dropping leaflets to residents warning of an impending attack, to give them time to escape.

Sometimes media bias is evident from what is not reported. For example, whenever disasters occur around the world, Israel is often the first to offer help and expertise, and even now their doctors are treating soldiers wounded across the border in Syria.

Something else rarely mentioned is the fact that Israel as a nation needs to restore its relationship with God, as in Jehoshaphat's day. Israel too has fallen into the ways of the world – with abortion and homosexuality rife, for example – and needs to repent and return to the God of her fathers who is (or should be) at the centre of the regular Jewish feasts.

Another fact greatly ignored, despite the cost to the British taxpayer, is the corruption on a grand scale practised by the Palestinian Authority. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords more than 20 years ago, the Palestinians have received more than 25 times more aid per capita than the amount of money donated from the United States to Europe under the post-World War II Marshall Plan, which paid for the complete reconstruction and rehabilitation of the European economy. Put in simple terms, with the money donated to the PA over this time, we could have reconstructed the European economy 25 times! Even according to Arabic newspaper reports, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas receives a salary of one million euros per month – more than 30 times that of US President Barack Obama!⁵

All of which makes talk of Palestinians suffering economic oppression at the hands of Israel patent nonsense. At the end of the day, we are witnessing a global battle for truth, with the facts suffering from the never-ending onslaught of both moral relativism and outright lying. Within Islamic cultures, the latter is a commonly accepted practice, particularly if it's to further a cause. Former PLO assassin Taysir 'Tass' Saada, who now follows Jesus and is a friend of Israel, has explained that "lying is viewed within Islam as an acceptable tactic if it advances the goals of the religion".⁶

The need for truth has never been greater and, as Tass Saada has discovered to his eternal joy, it can only ultimately be found in Jesus, who said: "I am the way and the truth and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

References

1 The World Turned Upside Down, Encounter Books, p53.
2 Gardner, C, 2013. Israel the Chosen. Create Space (available on Amazon), p75.
3 Ibid p77.
4 Ibid p78.
5 Gardner, C, 2015. Peace in Jerusalem. Olive Press Publisher, p146.
6 Ibid, p104, quoting Saada, T with Merrill, D, 2010. Once an Arafat Man, Tyndale Publishing.