The Problem with Israel

A data analyst’s perspective.

Photo by Ahmed Abu Hameeda on Unsplash

Background

I’m writing this article because I am sensitive to injustice. I was once partial toward Israel but have reversed my position since the October 7th 2023 incident. I live in Asia and did not understand the historical context or full horror of the Palestinian plight. But no one can now claim ignorance of the genocide that’s happening in Gaza, even though some may choose not to care about it. For the majority of the world at large, it has flipped the narrative on good guys / bad guys. Public opinion has swung 180º on Israel. Not too long ago, speaking out against Israel was considered a career-limiting move (in the West). Today, it’s become the opposite. Public support of Israel will likely get you booted out of restaurants and civil society … outside the United States.

How did my position on Israel change? As a data analyst, I’m drawn to facts and figures. I seek out data. And I understand that interpreting that data requires the right perspective. I apply first-principles thinking to shape that perspective as the starting point.

And so my 107th article is about the analytical journey I took to arrive at my pro-Palestine position. It is a tale of critical thinking and information assessment.

(I write a weekly series of articles where I call out bad thinking and bad practices in data analytics / data science which you can find here.)

First-Principles Thinking — Whose Home Is It?

What is the first-principles thinking in this Israel-Palestine issue? What grounds the interpretation of all subsequent information and arguments? It is the question: “Whose home is it?” The first-principles thinking is about the legitimacy of the land rights claim on Palestine. Here is what I understand:

1. The Jewish divine claim to Palestine is not a tenable argument. Outside of the legal structure, it pre-supposes we all recognise the same divinity. We obviously don’t.
2. Claiming indigenous land rights to Palestine because the Jews have lived on the land from 3,000 years ago is also an untenable argument. Jews are not an ethnic group. And DNA analysis have shown that current Israeli Jews have very little links, if any, to ancient semites. In fact, the indigenous land rights claim has backfired spectacularly, with DNA analysis showing that the current Palestinians are more closely linked to ancient semites.
3. Claiming the right of return due to historic forced expulsion is also invalid. Contrary to popular narrative, there is no archaeological and historical evidence to support the claim that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE led to forced mass expulsion of all Jews from the region. Instead, the evidence suggests that the Jews proactively migrated away from the land over a period of time, likely due to economic reasons. Those who stayed likely changed their religion to become Christians and Muslims, given the religious forces at play then, explaining the significant presence of ancient semite DNA in the current Palestinian population.
4. Claiming that the British had legally bequeathed the land to the Jews is problematic. The fact that 28 UN-member countries do not recognise the State of Israel throws into question that legal foundation. (Note that this is a different argument from recognising the State of Palestine.)

All current evidences show that the Palestinians were already present on the land for a long time prior to the formation of the State of Israel by the British. Arguments around “original” inhabitants is a pointless one because in their own stories, the Jews openly state that they too were NOT the original inhabitants of the land. So the vast majority of Israelis Jews are immigrants to the land, with no historic ties or title deeds, allowed to settle by threat of force, thus making them an occupying population.

And it is through this perspective of foreign occupation that all other information is to be assessed and interpreted. The Palestinians are the home owners, and the Israelis are the home intruders.

War vs Genocide

As an occupying force, the Israelis cannot claim the right to exist nor the right to self-defence. Just because the powerful few has spun that narrative doesn’t make it true. The “right to violent resistance” is recognised in international law as a means for peoples to struggle against colonial domination, foreign occupation, and racist regimes, rooted in the principle of self-determination. This is the lens from which we must assess the actions of the Palestinians. Labels such as “terrorism” are political constructs, and should not have any bearing on the interpretation of the data.

There can be no debate that what is happening in Palestine is a conflict between a severely under-armed resistance vs an overly armed aggressor. International law prohibits the occupier from destroying public property, or enacting demographic transfers. Documented evidence shows that Israel is actively targeting unarmed civilians, violating various international laws regarding armed conflicts. It is thus clear that Israel is NOT engaged in the “act of war” as it does not play by international rules. Its actions on the occupied Palestinian civilian population meets the legal definition of genocide as declared by the world’s leading genocide scholars. This is further corroborated by the fact that Israeli soldiers are increasingly committing suicide. When soldiers kill themselves, it’s usually because of guilt and shame.

Antisemitism vs Anti-Zionism

Israel is lobbing claims of antisemitism to obfuscate and distract from its aggression on a civilian population in Palestine. Antisemitism has become a pugnacious, weaponised form of victimhood. And the world is beginning to see its true colours. In November 2024, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, demanded the removal of an installation art of collaborative quilts entitled The Global Peace Flag: Uniting the World in the UN building. It featured children’s paintings expressing a call for world peace, with one panel showing “Free Palestine”. Danon said the messages promoted “hate”.

Jews around the world are claiming that Israel must be allowed to exist because there is no safe refuge for them anywhere in the world. The claim is an active distortion of the events of the Holocaust, and is unsubstantiated. The affected Jews could simply have opted to remain in their European country of birth post WWII. Instead, they wanted Palestine. Now, it should be noted that the idea of taking over Palestine to form an exclusive Jewish state significantly predates the Holocaust. This is a historical fact. This is the Zionist movement. And it has been bound up tightly with the construct of antisemitism. A 2025 poll, commissioned by an advocacy organisation called the Jewish Majority, reveals that 70% of American Jews regard anti-Zionism as antisemitic by definition. Similar percentages exist in countries with a significant Jewish population.

Since the October 7th 2023 incident, the Jewish advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League claim that there has been a rise of 140% in antisemitic incidents in the US, 284% in France, and 216% in Australia. On the face of it, this can seem worrisome, but dig deeper, and we see that, anti-Israel protests are also being chalked up as antisemitic incidents. CNN has estimated that 58% of antisemitic incidents in the US relates to anti-Israel and anti-Zionism. Post the Oct 7 incident, Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard have complained that they experienced pervasive social exclusion and isolation, known as “shunning”. Why should this be considered antisemitic? Why would moral-minded students want to hang out with genocide-supporting colleagues? I would argue that this shunning is justified. Consider these data points:

1. According to the 2024 Pew Research, 96% of Israeli Jews don’t think that their government went too far in its response to the Oct incident, with 52% of Israeli Jews having a favourable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
2. According to a 2025 survey by the Hebrew University’s aChord Center, 64% of Israelis believe that “there are no innocents” in Gaza.
3. A 2025 survey conducted by Pennsylvania State University shows that 82% of Israeli Jews support the transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries, with 54% of Jewish respondents being “very” supportive. (This is ethnic cleansing!)

Moral-minded folks all over the world are expressing their anger at those who are supporting, enabling and abetting the horrendous situation in Palestine. To equate this to antisemitism is simply disingenuous. The actions of moral-minded folks are about anti-colonialism, and perhaps even anti-supremacy (note that the median household income of Jews in the US is 2x higher than the overall; Jews in the US are not a dispossessed group like the Black or Hispanic Americans who experience racism constantly).

Conclusion

In a world of engineered narratives, misinformation, and state-backed agendas, how does one go about making sense of the data? You need to identify your first-principles starting point. For me, it was land rights. Others may have a different starting point. Convince yourself where you stand with regard to that first-principles starting point. Ground yourself on that perspective, and through that lens, interpret all subsequent data. What do you see? When presented with extraordinary numbers, always default to being suspicious. Dig deeper into those data. Everyone has an agenda. Start connecting the dots. Where is it leading you? For me, a pro-Palestine position was the only logical outcome.