Exploring Israel’s assault on truth, reason and respect
...with touches of Hume, Hobbes and Hannah Arendt

Let us start with David Hume. Context, caveats and nuances come later. Here is Hume, writing with regard to alleged miracles:

When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. (Abridged extract, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 10.13)

We no doubt hold many beliefs that we mistakenly assume to be rational. The mistakes may arise because of wishful thinking, closing eyes to evidence or misinterpreting the evidence even with eyes open. A rational regard for evidence is not always plain sailing; we sometimes encounter conflicting evidence. Here, with regard to Israel, we confront a conflict between on the one hand what Israel says and, on the other hand, what is so.

In the ‘dead man restored to life’ presented in the Bible as a miracle, Hume continues

I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

In that miracle example, Hume is drawing on how we often have evidence of people’s reports — of people’s testimony — being wrong, be it by misperceptions, errors in transmissions or deliberate attempts to deceive, yet (apart from the ‘dead man restored’ Biblical reports, two thousand years old) we have no evidence of a dead man being restored to life. Rationally we should reject the ‘greater miracle’, namely that the dead man was restored to life. It is a much lesser miracle, if miracle at all, that there may have been the misperceptions, mis-transmissions, wishful thinking or deceit giving rise to the ‘dead man restored’ subsequent beliefs. Such factors are far more likely to be in play than a dead man being restored to life which in humankind’s overall experience is highly highly unlikely.

Let us now apply Hume’s observations not to a proclaimed miracle, but to a repeated claim made by Israel, one that is wildly astonishing and yet ‘to achieve balance’ was widely reported in the media as on a par — or even more reliable — than denials of that claim. The claim is that Israel did not block or severely restrict vital supplies of food, fresh water and medical equipment to Gaza during 2024/2025, that there was no malnutrition, no famine and the lack of any such supplies did not result from an Israeli blockade. The Israeli claim was sometimes nuanced by adding that if it turned out there to have been malnutrition and so forth, it must have been caused by Hamas and the fault of the international relief agencies. For ease, let us call Israel’s basic claim and any nuance as the ‘no blockade’ claim. For ease, let us call the opposing claim, the ‘malnutrition existed’ claim.

The Israeli position is astonishing because numerous medical staff working in Gaza and numerous independent international organizations have declared that there have been horrendous sufferings mentioned through malnutrition and subsequent illness and disease, lack of tents and such like — and that they resulted from Israel’s blocking essential resources. The agencies include

Action Against Hunger (ACF) 
American Baptist Churches Palestine Justice Network  
Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD)  
Christian Aid  
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
Oxfam International  
Red Crescent
Red Cross
Save the Children (SCI)  
Unicef
UNRWA 

Further, various international organizations condemned Israel with reference to international law, referring both to the blockage and the disproportionate bombing of Gaza. The International Court of Justice maintains that Israel’s actions have been plausibly genocidal.  The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021) maintains than the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have been committing acts of genocide as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Amnesty International and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) have reached similar assessments.

Israel’s basic response to the world is that all the above — the medical staff, the international aid agencies, the international courts and commissions — are lying. Further, that they are antisemitic. I discuss the antisemitic charge later on.

Of course, if there were only one source being relied upon by all those different agencies regarding the malnutrition claim, then that would undermine the extent of the evidence against the Israeli ‘no blockade’ position, but — to repeat — the above agencies were or were relying on different sources, ranging from freelance medical staff to UN employees to charitable workers from across the world. And there is photographic evidence in support of the appalling malnutrition and desperation for food and fresh water. Further, in recent months, even major international supporters of Israel — apart from the US — have at last accepted that Israel has been guilty of a blockade causing such horrors, a ‘man-made famine’ as it has been described.

Let us then put the conflict over Israel’s ‘no blockade’ into Hume’s approach:

When Israel tells me that all the agency reports of malnutrition in Gaza are mistaken, I immediately consider whether it be more probable that Israel should either deceive or be deceived in what it tells me, or the fact, which Israel relates, should really have happened.

And continuing:

I weigh the one ‘miracle’ (of all those agencies lying) against the other (of Israel lying); and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision and always reject the greater ‘miracle’.

Which is the greater miracle? Which is the more astonishing fact? It is that all those agencies, with all their evidence, are lying, but Israel is not. Hence, a rational believer would dismiss Israel’s claim.

That conclusion can be further supported by reflection on motives. It is not at all surprising that Israel would lie to further its expressed ends that include the complete defeat of Hamas; it would be odd, to say the least, for all those agencies and individuals on the ground reporting the blockade and malnutrition to be lying. The agencies and so forth are motivated to save lives — and objecting to Israel’s blockade has that end in view, unless it is thought that all those agencies were seeking excess resources for some unknown motives. The explanation of Israel’s deceit is that it places highest priority on destroying Hamas by whatever means it has — including lying on the international stage.

The above Israeli approach coheres with Israel’s refusal to allow unaccompanied independent journalists and organizations, such as the BBC, from entering Gaza. Hence, disingenuously, Israel would claim that the malnutrition reports cannot be taken seriously for they are not by independent journalists.

Most recently, with the ceasefire of 11 October 2025, the agreement in part requires Israel to allow adequate essential supplies into Gaza — clearly implying that prior to then, Israel was not allowing.

Going further

With regard to the Israeli ‘no blockage’ claims, Israel has shown itself to have no regard for the evidence of independent sources, no regard for truth — and hence no regard for treating the individuals telling the truth with respect. Of course, there is a far worse and deeper lack of regard by Israel — namely, for the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza who have suffered from the lack of vital resources. In addition there has been the horror of the Israeli bombing and other attacks on Gaza, day and night, with the constant threatening howl of drones overhead.

Israel to date has killed well over 60,000 Palestinians (‘well over’, given the likelihood of many bodies yet to be found under the rubble) including 20,000 children. Israel has injured or maimed further thousands and ruined lives and livelihoods of around two million, in the main destroying homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, crops and herds, and the basic infrastructure needed for sanitation, electricity, road access, fuel, communications, clean water and food supplies, as well any structure for law and order. With regard to the numbers — true to form — Israel has challenged them, arguing that there have been no independent assessment.

The brutality identified above shows Israel’s lack of concern for humanity, for decency and respect for people. We may also wonder how the brutality fits in with Judaism’s claims about compassion and justice. Israel’s responses rely on misleading rhetoric. One response is that the Israeli forces help civilians by telling them to move to safe zones — and many Gazans have undergone displacements many times. Moving from one area to another is not easy with hundreds of thousands lacking transport, trudging along tracks, trying to carry a few possessions. Many move from ‘safe zone’ to ‘safe zone’ only to find that they are not at all safe and that there is nowhere to shelter, a shortage of food and water and so forth. And, of course, thousands were already ill, disabled or elderly and hence unable to move to such ‘safe’ zones.

Of course, Israel repeats the mantra that it is acting in self-defence and seeking to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas, a terrorist group. On the terrorist point, let us note that in the 1940s the Irgun and Haganah Zionist terrorist organizations were key to the emergence of an Israeli state with their terrorist acts. Indeed, David Ben-Gurion from Haganah became the first prime minister of Israel, while Irgun leader Menachem Begin became the sixth prime minister. Thus, Israel, as with many nations, deploy the negative term ‘terrorist’ as it best suits them.

On the self-defence point, it is an affront to humanity to believe that the horrors inflicted on around two million Palestinians, most of them civilians, justifies the Israeli action. Further, there is plenty of evidence of Israel’s gratuitious wrecking of homes, mosques and even protected Palestinian cultural sites and historical artefacts.

Another response by Israel is to compare its approach with earlier war conflicts. Israel insists that it has done more than others in trying to prevent civilian casualties. Now, it is true that, for example, with regard to the US nuclear attack on Japan, there was vast devastation and no regard for the civilians, but that does not justify as acceptable what Israel has been recently doing. There were other ways in which Israel could have defended itself without deploying its vast military power, courtesy of the US, against the Palestinian people. Indeed, it is misleading to be describing the conflict as a ‘war’ when the military action is mostly by Israel, by far, with the backing of the world’s superpower — an action that has left Gaza in ruins. It is also shameful to liken, as Israel frequently does, Hamas’s killing of around 1,200 Israelis and taking hostage of around 250 with the Holocaust (Shoah) where the Nazi Germany regime killed six million Jews after delivering horrendous suffering.

Interlude: caveats and nuances

For avoidance of doubt, my focus on Israel is not to condone the brutality of the Hamas attack on Israel and the political philosophy and approach of Hamas to government. The focus here on Israel arises because Israel and its justifications have received active support by Western governments and continued in the main to do so by the US and others. Hamas constantly received considerable outrage throughout the West, received no diplomatic support — even though the deaths and destruction caused by Hamas in Israel are small in relation to that perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinians.

For ease, I write of Israel but, of course, that is shorthand for the Israel government and its supporters, notably the US via its support, militarily, financially and politically. My criticisms of Israel as assaulting truth, reason and humanity therefore also applies to the US. Further, for avoidance of doubt, I expressly note that not all Israelis and not all Jews support Israel’s current policies and many supporters of Israel’s actions are neither Israeli nor Jewish.

I focus on Gaza, but similar observations apply to Israel’s attempted justification for its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel’s ‘get out of jail free’ card: ‘Antisemitism’

The ‘antisemitism’ card is played whenever severe criticisms are made of Israel’s policies — of Israel’s blockade, the horrendous destruction of Gaza by bombing, the driving out of Palestinians from the West Bank by Jewish ‘settlors’.

Israel’s line of approach is to insist that those who make substantial objections to Israel’s actions — be it in terms of Israel deliberately causing a man-made famine, committing genocide or the killing of tens of thousands of children, women and other civilians — are antisemitic. Israel has even accused the UK, France and other states as antisemitic, when they finally objected to the horrors caused by the Israeli action despite their otherwise support for Israel.

The above Israeli line becomes somewhat undermined when the critics are themselves Jewish or Israeli. Israel sometimes sees them as Jews who are anti-Israel, sometimes as self-hating Jews — and, in fact, some of the Jewish objectors to Israel are extreme Orthodox insisting roughly that the creation of the Jewish state must be by God, not by man.

Now, it would indeed be an interesting, though highly depressing fact if — if — it turns out that all who make the claims against Israel’s actions include a hatred of all Jews for being Jewish. On the surface, at least, many of those objectors to Israel’s blockade clearly do not hate Jews; many of those organizations have helped Jewish communities when they have come under attack, many defend Jews to go about their lives in countries and having the same rights as those of non-Jews. Many indeed support the existence of Israel.

The Israeli position is disingenuous, but were it to be taken seriously, it runs into epistemological trouble. We can show that by turning again to Hume — well, a version of his empiricism. Statements to have sense must either be of the empirical world — open to some degree of verification or falsification through experiences — or be of relations of ideas, that is, truths and falsehoods grounded in conceptual definitions.

It seems that the Israeli approach, assuming it is serious, is committed to the idea that a sufficient condition for antisemitism is that the individuals concerned accuse Israel of the blockade and indeed of disproportionate bombing of civilians and so forth. Israel appears not to allow the conceptual possibility of a non-Jew objecting to the blockade, yet not being antisemitic. Or possibly Israel maintains that it happens to be an empirical truth that all who condemn Israel for the blockage are antisemitic — just as it is an empirical truth that all gases expand when heated.

Let us assess that position.

We can test the gas example and we know how to spot its not holding (we spot a gas being heated yet not expanding), but Israel does not appear to allow for even the possibility that a non-Jewish objector to Israel’s Gazan policy is not antisemitic. It seems that the evidence for the universal claim amounts to, “Look, these people condemn Israel for the blockade and so they must be antisemitic” — but that is no evidence at all. It is akin to saying, using the trite example, all swans are white — and when a black swan is presented as counter-evidence, it is rejected with ‘It can’t be a swan because all swans are white and this creature is black’.

Israel’s use of ‘antisemitism’ is such that the claim ‘Non-Jews who condemn Israel are antisemitic’ is a conceptual or definitional rejig of the term rather than an empirical claim. Israel’s use is manifesting a misunderstanding of ‘antisemitism’. The misunderstanding has consequences.

Consider something similar, resting on a misunderstanding. Sometimes it is argued that people only ever act out of self-interest. Even charitable acts are undertaken because the agents are trying to satisfy their wants or needs to perform the acts — otherwise how could the actions come about? Thomas Hobbes at times held that position. Here is Hobbes through John Aubrey’s Brief Lives:

He was very charitable (to the best of his ability) to those that were true objects of his bounty. One time, I remember, going in the Strand, a poor and infirmed old man craved his alms. He, beholding him with eyes of pity and compassion, put his hand in his pocket, and gave him 6 pence. Said a divine (Dr Jaspar Mayne) that stood by: “Would you have done this, if it had not been Christ’s command?” “Yea,” said he. “Why?” quoth the other. “Because,” said he, “I was in pain to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease me.”

Here it seems that the charitable act was performed to satisfy Hobbes’s need to avoid discomfort, that is, it was self-interested, though with some beneficial results.

Suppose that we accept that Hobbesian line. That is, we describe everyone, including ourselves, as always acting in our perceived self-interest (I say ‘perceived’ because obviously we may sometimes make mistakes over what is in our self-interest). On that assumption, we should then need to recognize that within self-interested acts (that is, all acts) it is valuable to distinguish between on the one hand the self-interested individuals who help others — run to save someone from falling, give to charity and such like — and on the other hand those self-interested who never help others. That is, we need to bring back a distinction that was formerly recognized in terms of some acts being self-interested, others not. And we know which individuals we would rather have as friends — namely, those self-interested who will help us for free as opposed to those self-interested who will help us only if we pay them a fee.

A similar line is needed if we fall for the idea, no doubt based on neurological evidence or philosophical argument, that no one ever acts freely. Let us assume that that the idea is true: we should still need to distinguish and find it valuable to do so between those cashiers who open the bank’s safe because a gun is pointed at their heads and those who open the bank’s safe to run off with the money themselves even though, according to the idea, neither are acting freely.

Similarly then, applying the need to recognize differences to the Israeli indiscriminate charge of ‘antisemitism’, we should need to distinguish between at least two groups of the vast numbers who, according to Israel, must be antisemitic: namely, on the one hand there are the antisemites who have no objections to Jewish people going about their lives as they wish and no objection to the existence of a Jewish state and, on the other hand, there are those antisemites who object to the very existence of Jewish people at least in their own country or who hate all Jewish individuals simply for being Jewish. That is an important difference — yet Israel and many state’s laws, such as those of the UK, concerning antisemitism overlook that important distinction.

“I teach you differences”

The quotation, from Shakespeare, was considered by Wittgenstein as an aphorism to use for his Philosophical Investigations. Sadly, as the above section showed, Israel’s use of ‘antisemitism’ as also the term’s use in the UK and the US — by governments and also interested parties such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews — conceals important differences to the detriment of truth, toleration and understanding.

In the UK, for example, official figures show that there has been a rise in antisemitism since the Hamas attack of 2023 and Israel’s response. Curiously, though, there is scant interest in what constitutes this rise and how using the sweeping condemnation of ‘antisemitic’ might well be covering important differences and indeed making matters worse.

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One thought is that, given the rise has happened very much since the start of the Israeli attack on Gaza and the appalling treatment of civilians, some of the behaviour that is deemed to be ‘antisemitic’ is in fact ‘anti-the-policies-of-Netanyahu’s-government-in-Gaza-and-the-West-Bank’ — but that description, of course, lacks the ease, brevity and eye-catching headline ‘antisemitic’. Some other of the behaviour deemed antisemitic might well manifest an objection to the existence of a distinctive Jewish State that discriminates against Palestinians. Neither group, if as just explained, is antisemitic in the meaning of that term as applying to those who hate Jews for being Jews or who want to eradicate Jews from a particular area or even from the world. Deeming those groups in headlines — in news bulletins, in commentator columns — as antisemitic does not aid understanding, clarity and respect with regard to the underlying matters. Rather, such headlines can generate unnecessary fear within certain Jewish communities and may well lead to the groups which object to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to think, “Ah well, call us ‘antisemitic’ then”.

Consider someone — Hannah, say — who lives in an area of London where there is a large Haredi community. Hannah feels considerable unease at the way in which the Jewish women must dress according to their Judaism — she wonders whether they are oppressed — and she is disturbed by the Hasidic prayer chants that she hears from neighbours; she also disapproves of the children being sent to Hasidic schools; and for that matter, she objects to plans for an eruv to be marked out by poles and wires so that observant Jews know where they may roam on the Sabbath. Is Hannah being antisemitic? Surely not. She does not hate Jews for their Jewishness, but she strongly opposes certain practices and beliefs of highly conservative Judaism. Indeed, she may well enjoy the companionship of atheist Jews and their Jewish humour and attitude to the world. Going further, she could be Jewish herself and perfectly happy to be so.

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Much more needs to be said, but I end with an obvious truth from Hannah Arendt:

If as a Jew I wish to spend my vacations only in the company of Jews, I cannot see how anyone can reasonably prevent my doing so;

— an obvious truth if we think in terms of how we may surely choose with whom we want to become friends and share holidays, beds and a drink or two — though Arendt continues

…just as I see no reason why [certain] resorts should not cater to a clientele that wishes not to see Jews while on a holiday.

Here we see the need for differences to be recognized — the difference here between discriminations we make in personal lives and the discriminations in public life. Of course, the next puzzle is quite where to draw the line between the personal and public and what justifies that particular drawing and its consequences for different communities.

I am not thereby antisemitic if I do not want to go out with others who delight in the Jewish customs just as I am not Islamophobic if I stay away from mosques. I am antisemitic and Islamophobic if I object to Jews and Muslims having the vote or the same rights as the non-religious regarding conducting their lives as they want without undue interference on others.

One criticism of Israel is that it explicitly discriminates against non-Jews in the public sphere. The Basic Law: Israel – The Nation-State of the Jewish People — of 2018 maintains that:

the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and the realization of national self-determination in the State of Israel will be exclusive to the Jewish people; immigration leading to automatic citizenship is exclusive to Jews.

Going back to the 1950’s, Israel’s Law of Return states that only Jews have the ‘right of return’ to Israel — although the criteria for being Jewish for that right are not as strict as some ‘strict’ Orthodox would prefer. Paradoxically, Jews have a ‘right of return’ even though virtually all those families had not previously lived in Israel, whereas those Palestinian families which once lived in that land now deemed as Israel, but fled when modern-day Israel was set up in 1948, lacked and lack that right of return.

There are many puzzles and problems that revolve round the idea of there being a Jewish State, its relationship to Jews, to the Palestinians and indeed to Judaism and the belief that the land was God-given to the Jews — but a philosophical assessment of those puzzles and problems requires another paper.

Coda

The above refers to the Israeli actions in the past tense. That is not to imply that since the ‘ceasefire agreement’ of 11th October 2025, Israel no longer assaults truth, reason and respect — to some degree. Manifestly it does. For avoidance of doubt, so does Hamas.

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