By : Ya Libnan Editorial Board , Op-Ed
Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been portrayed as a safe haven for Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust. But history tells a different story. The creation of Israel was never primarily about providing refuge for the Jewish people—it was about establishing a Western foothold in the oil-rich Middle East. The plight of Holocaust survivors became a convenient justification for a much larger geopolitical strategy: control of the region’s energy resources.
For centuries, Jews coexisted peacefully with Muslims and Christians across the Middle East. During the Arab rule of Spain, Jews thrived in what they still call their “Golden Age.” There was no existential threat from the Arabs; coexistence, not conflict, was the norm. The tragedy began only when Western powers used Jewish suffering to justify a colonial project that displaced another people—the Palestinians—to achieve their own economic and strategic goals.
You cannot build peace on dispossession. Displacing one people to house another guarantees perpetual instability. The wars that have followed since 1948 were not accidents of history—they were built into the very architecture of Israel’s creation.
Fast forward to October 7, 2023. The Hamas attack on Israel, and the Hezbollah assault the next day, were both engineered by Iran to expand its influence across the region. The United States, in turn, rushed to arm Israel with its most lethal weapons—not out of concern for the Jewish people, but to devastate the region further and later profit from its reconstruction. The pattern is as cynical as it is familiar.
The Western world, led by Washington, once again rallied behind Israel, repeating the same motives that guided its creation: regional dominance and resource control. Today, two years later, President Trump arrives in Tel Aviv like a self-styled savior, helping to rescue a fraction of the hostages taken by Hamas—the very group Israel once created to divide and rule the Palestinians.
It is time for both Arabs and Jews to open their eyes. They have been victims—not beneficiaries—of the same Western plan. Peace will never come from Washington, London, or Paris. It must come from within the region itself, when Arabs and Jews together reject manipulation, expose the ploy that set them against one another, and reclaim the right to shape their own shared future in peace and dignity.
This home belongs to all of us, Arabs and Jews
The world has watched Arabs and Jews bleed for generations while others profited from their pain. It is time to break that cycle. The sons of Abraham share the same roots, the same hopes, and the same right to live in dignity. The true victory will not come from more wars or foreign intervention—but from Arabs and Jews standing side by side to reclaim their humanity and rebuild the peace that was stolen from them.