CAEF Letter to Broadview Re: The article by Sanam Islam is full of fallacious statements and borders on antisemitism in denying Jewish history & blaming Israel for the crimes of Hamas

November 10, 2025

Editor

Broadview Magazine

letters@broadview.org

Dear Editor,

The article by Sanam Islam that you published in Broadview on October 28, 2025 is full of fallacious statements and borders on antisemitism in denying Jewish history and blaming Israel for the crimes of Hamas. The author may only be quoting Saeed Teebi whom he interviewed and to whom he shows great sympathy, but both are sharing lies and fabrications, not historical facts.

Here are a few of the most obvious errors:

1. The UN Commission has yet to produce any evidence of a genocide and given that the population of Gaza has increased by 2.8% over the past two years, that is a funny kind of genocide. The vary definition of “genocide” does not apply since there has been absolutely no intent by Israel to destroy the “Palestinian people” as evidenced by both the increase in the population and the fact that Arabs are 21% of the Israeli population and have equal and full civil and human rights.

Repeating the lie of a genocide is antisemitic, encouraging hatred towards Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews.

2.  Hamas invaded Israel; thus Israel is legally and morally justified in defending itself. Pay attention to the fact that Hamas killed Jews and Muslims, Christians, citizens of Israel, tourists and foreign workers. It was an indiscriminate barbaric slaughter.  Israel, by contrast, has fought a more humane war than any pre-existing army in history, taking great care not to kill civilians. However, as in any war, there are mistakes, accidents and innocents are killed. Far fewer would be killed if Hamas didn’t use women and children as shields, use hospitals, mosques and schools as weapons depots and rocket launching sites. So, every death is the fault of Hamas, which of course could have and should surrender.  Hamas wants more deaths so it can continue to sob its story to the world. It is not the underdog; it is the perpetrator of mass violence against its own people.

3.  Teebi claims to be Palestinian but ask him and his parents what they claimed to be before 1964, as it was always the Jews who were “Palestinian until Arafat and the KGB concocted the story of an Arab Palestinian people.

I know quite a few Jews holding passports with Palestinian as their identity. The only sovereign state in that land was Israel under King David. There has never been a state called Palestine nor a distinct people or culture. That is simply a fact.  Before 1964, the Arabs of Israel and surroundings identified as one people. From 1948-1967, Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, and referred to it as the West Bank but that is not a legal name. The Arabs were Jordanians, until Israel liberated its land, and the people invented the term “Palestinian,” which of course is not Arabic. There is no “P” in Arabic. The land at one time, under the Romans was  Syria-Palestina which was the name used to wipe out Jewish sovereignty,  memory, history. Under the Ottomans there was not a Palestinian people. Under the Romans there was none, nor under any other “occupying power” The Jews were there for millennia before Islam was invented and before the Arabs invaded in the 7^th century.

4. Teebi’s parents were Kuwaiti if born there, not Palestinian. The people who today identify as Palestinian come from many lands, but few have hundreds or thousands of years of history. Many are easily identified by their last names of clan names as Egyptian, Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, Arabian, and some it has been proven, are actually descendants from the Jews of ancient Israel.  It is correct that Kuwait doesn’t grant citizenship but ask why? It is common knowledge that the government of Kuwait expelled tens of thousands of “Palestinian Arabs’ because they sided with Iraq which invaded Kuwait. Similarly, Jordan stripped citizenship from those in Judea and Samaria after 1967 because they did not want what they deemed as trouble makers to take residency in Jordan; and then of course there was Black Septamber when Palestinian Arabs rose up and tried to unseat the monarchy. However, Transjordan really is the natural country for the Arabs as it was set up to be.

5. People are indeed ignorant of the plight of Arabs who left Israel or the disputed territories because they have fabricated an exodus story that suggests they were driven out. Utterly not true. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence after a vote by the UN which gave the Jewsa piece of their ancient homeland beside a new country for the Arabs. On May 15, 1948, 5 Arab armies invaded, intent on killing all the Jews. Several other states are all derived from Mandates given to European powers after WWI-Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. These were ‘creations” of the Western Victorious Allies, and if Israel isn’t legitimate, then neither are any of these countries.

6. The Nakba is another huge lie, a term that was applied by an Arab describing the humiliating defeat of the powerful Arab armies by a small ill-equipped, rag tag Israeli force that included the remnants of the Holocaust. It is a word for “defeat” not appropriately applied to any action by Israel. Had the Arabs not attacked, there would be two peaceful countries, but since 1048, the Arabs have tried countless times to decimate Israel, which is the very definition of genocide. The Arab leaders told the Arabs in Israel to leave their homes, and they would eradicate the Jews, then the Arabs could come back. They expected it to take no more than two weeks, but they lost. Just as Hamsa expected to destroy Israel but lost. Just as Iran continues to try to destroy Israel but will continue to lose. Sadly,  “Nakba’ is another word used to encourage antisemitism. The Germans lost to the Allies. The Japanese lost to the Allies. The world continues and those countries became our friends. The Arabs lost to Israel and are determined, after 80 years, to continue to fight in the hope of eradicating a country and a people. They teach this in their schools, mosques and media. They inherited the Nazi legacy of Jew hatred and destruction. But then remember their leader, Al-Husseini was an ally of Hitler, and their culture is of a supremacist ideology that insists that once a land is held by Muslims, it can never be held by “infidels,” so Israel’s very existence is humiliating.

7. The interviewee, Teebi, continues in the interview to share a lie. There is no genocide, but if he is a writer of fiction, he can call it anything he likes. He claims many artists in Gaza were killed, Ask him why? Why is Hamas dedicated to eradicating the Jewish people, which is clearly what their charter says and the only goal or purpose for Hamas. Nowhere does Hamas speak of uplifting the people of Gaza, creating anything useful, growing an economy, building a future. It is a death cult, dedicated to killing Jews and any Arabs who stand in their way. Ask why no artists, writers, or others have urged peace, called for co-existence, recognized the 3500 year history of Jews on the land, taught accurate history which is that Arabs are the colonizers who came from Arabia in the 7^th century? They conquered and colonised across North Africa and the Middle East, decimating Jewish and Christian communities and continue in many places to do this until today. Both Turkey and Egypt, for example, were Christian countries, but Islamic leaders have not only killed or displaced Christians, they have effectively erased much of their history. This too is part of the battle that Muslims are perpetrating against the Jews today.

8. Artists do have a significant role to play, and one would hope it is to be truth tellers. The Islamist culture of Gaza is undemocratic, and murderous, with no rights for minorities, women or LGBTQ people. Dissenters are murdered. There is little hope for a democracy; Islamists do not believe in democracy and are clearly stating that it is Sharia Law that must dominate. If Teebi believes in this, then what is he doing in the West, and if Sanam Islam also believes this, then he is not a friend to Canada, or to Christians, Jews,  or to Muslims who want peace, freedom, equal opportunity and justice.

Respectfully,

Andria Spindel, Executive Director