David Kopp

I am not Jewish. But I am a proud Israeli citizen. I live in Tel Aviv. Despite the world having extremely opinionated views about the country I live in, few people I have come across on X (that don’t live here) know little of substance about Israel apart from their warped sense of history and reality. This is the first post of a series I will write entitled Everything You Think You Know About Israel is (Probably) Wrong. The points are not in any particular order. Spread the word. Most Israelis (just over 50%) are not white. The devastating impact on European Jews of the Holocaust meant that the newly formed Israel in 1948 was largely populated by Jews fleeing persecution in Muslim-ruled countries predominantly in the Middle East and North Africa. These are known as Mizrahi Jews and when the State of Israel was formed they made up 80% of the Jewish population living here. Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel since around 1208 BCE, that’s 3,200 years — long before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Muslim faith, in contrast, dates back 1,400 years (610 CE). Yes, when they lost majority rule in the 7th-century Muslim conquest they were not in the majority for centuries, but still lived in their ancestral homeland. Arab terrorism against Jews existed before 1948. In 1929, for example, 67 Jews were killed in the Hebron massacre, attacked and slaughtered by the Arabs they lived and worked beside. My wife’s great-grandfather Ben-Zion Gershon (who was a local doctor that often treated the Arab community without accepting payment) was tortured, had both his eyes gouged out and was then murdered. This was after his daughter Esther was raped in front of him, and his wife Zahava had both arms chopped off and was left to die. This was just one of many similar massacres inflicted on Jews that day. I will continue this series over the coming days.