Just over a week after Hamas terrorists rampaged through Israeli border communities, raping and slaughtering civilians while kidnapping others to take hostage back in Gaza, Vox produced a video that asks, “Where was the Israeli army on October 7?”
But if viewers thought they were going to watch a good-faith examination into how more than a thousand murderous terrorists managed to breach Israel’s border on the day of the massacre, they would be sorely disappointed.
For, Vox’s eight-minute film is nothing more than an exercise in how to justify Hamas terrorism and flip the narrative to hold victims responsible.
DESPICABLE: In @voxdotcom’s latest 8 minute video, the only people who aren’t held responsible for Hamas’ brutal massacre of Israeli civilians are… Hamas.
Because Vox is only interested in victim-blaming & rationalizing terror. https://t.co/9jPqf7akF2
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 16, 2023
The video starts with the briefest explanation about Hamas’ onslaught — 25 seconds to be precise — that manages to leave out some key details, including how many unarmed men, women and children Palestinian terrorists killed and the number of innocent civilians that were dragged back to the Gaza.
Vox moves swiftly on to repeat the tired claim that Gaza is an “open-air prison,” forgetting in the process that not only does Egypt also control the movement of Gazans via its own blockade, but that the events of October 7 are precisely why Israel does not have a porous border with the enclave.
And then it becomes clear: Vox doesn’t really want to find out how Hamas’ invasion was thwarted by the IDF, but rather wants to criticize Israel for having the gall to spend money on military technology that it uses to both defend its citizens and stymie the Islamist terrorism that emanates from nearly all its borders.
Viewers are then given a shocking piece of historical revisionism.
Describing the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, the outlet claims “Zionist militias and paramilitary groups carried out a mass expulsion and massacre of Palestinians, seizing their villages to expand the Jewish state.” The truth, of course, is that soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, five neighboring Arab armies invaded Israel, forcing the nascent Jewish state to fight for its survival.
Vox fast-forwards to the 1967 Six-Day War, which is vaguely summarized as a “war with [Israel’s] Arab neighbors” — again ignoring how it was a defensive war in which Israel fought for survival against multiple armies that had declared their intent to annihilate the Jewish state.
More importantly, Vox fails to note that Jerusalem even offered to return the territories it captured in return for peace after the war’s conclusion. The Arab response to Israel’s land for peace offer became known as the Three Nos: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
About midway through the video, Vox gets to the main thrust of its argument: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are to blame for Hamas’ attacks.
Bolstering this grotesque claim, it states the building of Israeli settlements amounts to a war crime while referencing isolated incidents of settler violence from information it was given by anti-Israel NGO B’Tselem.
Naturally, Vox fails to mention how such disgraceful attacks on Palestinians are perpetrated by a tiny minority of extremists living in the West Bank, as well as the fact that these criminals are both condemned by Israeli society and subject to the full force of the law.
Hoping to prove its point that tensions in the West Bank led to Hamas’ vicious assault, the outlet states the Israeli military has “killed hundreds of Palestinians in a series of violent events this year alone.” Now, aside from the fact that the majority of those killed this year were claimed by terrorist organizations, Vox does not elaborate on how the attack by Hamas, which clearly involved years of planning, was a response to incidents that occurred in just the last few months.
Moreover, at no point does Vox note the most obvious reason Hamas mounted its campaign of murder: it is a genocidal terror group that is sworn to the destruction of Israel and Jewish people.
Vox ends with its offensively simplistic conclusion: Israel attempting to “colonize” land in the West Bank means its military took its eye off the Gaza border fence.
It truly is a masterclass in victim-blaming — all packaged nicely in a slick and shareable YouTube video.
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