Prompt: Examine how the text is rhetorically designed in order to appeal to its intended audience.

The Middle East has become a hot topic of discussion for the past 20 years, especially regarding its wars, particularly with Israel and Palestine. It’s likely that you’ve seen a video of bombs dropping in Palestine surface the internet. Every day, an innocent Palestinian has their rights violated in some way. Today, we see episodes of bombings, evictions, and other forms of injustice and persecution all over the Palestinian land. For millennia, the Jews and Muslims fought over which religion should be entitled to Jerusalem. It’s a common misconception to think that all Israeli Jews are bad, however this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s important to discern Jews from Zionists. The Zionists are a radical political party whose aim was to re-establish Israel as the center for Jewish identity. By reuniting Jews from around the globe, the Zionists were successful. However, their approach came at the expense of the rights of innocent civilians. Zionism is criticized by many to be an “aggressive and discriminatory ideology” (“Zionism”). At first, the motives behind the conflict were about land and freedom. But over time, Islamophobia became a stronger motive. Although the motives behind the Israeli-Palestinian War are still geared towards land and freedom, the Zionists use Islamophobia as a way of justifying their discriminatory approach to liberate the Jews and establish a national state of Israel.

In the late 19th century, Jews began migrating into Palestine (“Zionism”). When the Holocaust started in 1939, the Jews were set on fleeing from the dangers of anti-Semitic persecution and finding a new place to settle in. Today, the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslim while the Israeli population is mainly constructed of Jews. Since Jerusalem, a city in the Palestinian area, has a religious significance to the Jews as a Holy Land, the Zionists decided to reincarnate the presence of Judaism in the Holy Land and establish their own country. (“Israel”) The problem with this however is that Muslims also cherish Jerusalem as a Holy Land. “The Temple Mount is a compound in Jerusalem containing religious structures like the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque” (“Jerusalem”). “The Jews believe that King David conquered Jerusalem in 1000 B.C. and made it the capital of the Jewish kingdom” (“Jerusalem”). For Muslims, they believe it was the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. It also contains the al-Aqsa mosque, which is considered by Muslims as the third holiest site in Islam. From this, we see that one of the main issues surrounding this conflict is religion. Some may argue that Jews are entitled to Jerusalem over the Muslims because they have nowhere else to settle. It may initially seem like a fair argument, but there are many more reasons supporting the jihadist (Islamic) cause behind the conflict.

Recently, in May 2021, Israeli officers attacked Palestinian Muslims offering night prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. This attack left hundreds of civilians and a few officers injured. In response, Gaza militants launched multiple rockets that caused the Israeli military to retaliate and send airstrikes in return. (Kingsley, Kershner) Ensuing these attacks were dozens of Palestinian deaths, with many of them being children.

Islamophobia is used an excuse for right-wing Zionists to persecute Muslims. Since their focus has been about liberating the Jews from “Islamic terrorism”, it has been well documented that Israel is determined to eliminate the jihadists and protecting Israel (Baroud, Rubeo). Islamophobia is also used by these far-right extremist groups to stage the conflict as a second coming of the Holocaust (Al Jazeera). By labeling the conflict as a religious one, it would communicate to the world that the Muslims are persecuting the Jews similarly to how they were persecuted to WWII. This is an effective strategy because it shifts the narrative away from the violent acts committed by the Israeli army and enlarges the scope of Islamic violence. It also helps the Zionists gain the support of other global leaders like the United States. By doing so, the state of Israel becomes a more powerful force, which puts the Palestinians at further risk of losing their land. The reality is that these right wingers are placing constant pressure on the Palestinians to leave by violating their human rights.

The Israeli government aims to make Judaism a dominant force in Jerusalem and evict the Muslims. “To sustain Jewish control, the Israeli government adopted policies aimed at mitigating what they’ve described as a demographic ‘threat’ that Palestinians pose. These policies include limiting the population and political power of Palestinians, granting the right to vote only to Palestinians who live within the borders of Israel… and preventing people to move within the OPT. To maximize Jewish Israeli control over land, the majority of Palestinians who live outside of Jewish dominant cities are placed into secluded areas restricting access to land and housing, while nurturing the growth of nearby Jewish communities” (Shakir). It cannot be argued that these policies were put in place to establish freedom. These are clear indications of discrimination that fail to have any justification for. When a government describes an ethnic group as a demographic threat, they are motivated to “ethnically cleanse” its country by all means. If the conflict was about land, perhaps it would make more sense for the Israeli government to cooperate with the Palestinians rather than evict them from their homeland. Placing an ethnic group into secluded areas is a form of systematic oppression. Therefore, it is safe to say that the goals of the conflict have shifted more towards Islamophobia than land and freedom because the Zionists adopted policies that were directed towards eliminating Muslims from Israel, helping them gain total control over the land and establishing a state independent from Palestine.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a complicated issue for over a century. It’s no doubt that this will remain a problem for decades to come. Furthermore, this cannot be labelled as a “war” because this would mean that both sides are violently killing and oppressing each other. If one side is clearly dominating the other, then it would be an act of injustice to call this conflict a “war”. When the Jews moved into Palestine, they started a Zionist movement to reestablish a Jewish presence in Palestine and create their own independent state. However, the right-wing political party shifted its goals away from liberating the Jews from Europe after WWII and towards discriminating and evicting Palestinian Muslims out of their homeland.