I join in condemning Hamas and all terrorist organizations. The horrific actions of Hamas terrorists on October 7 cannot be justified or excused. However, it must be possible to find an explanation for them.

I am neither Israeli, nor Arab, nor American. I am neither Jewish nor Muslim. I am a Catholic with deep roots in Africa. As I read the news in the mainstream media I try to keep sentiment at bay and simply to look at facts.

How did the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis begin? With a 1947 decision by the United Nations to divide Palestine into two states. This meant that Arabs owning land in the new Jewish state had two choices: to leave their ancestral land and resettle in an Arab state or to live as a minority in a Jewish state.

Try to put yourself in Palestinian shoes at that time. The choice would have been intolerable. Ask the citizens of Arizona if they would accept a UN decision to give their land back to the Pueblo native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years before they were dispersed by American immigrants.

The Palestinians were unable to see why they should be made to pay for the crime of the Holocaust. Their point of view is logical. Germany was responsible for the extermination of six million European Jews. So wasn’t it the responsibility of Germany to provide a safe haven where Jews could govern themselves and be safe? Why not expel Germans from Bavaria and settle Jews there?

It is said that Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, had a concise explanation of why the Jews had a right to Palestine. In 1936 he was asked by Lord Peel, a British diplomat, “Do you have a deed or contract of sale that gives you the right to take the place of the native Arabs who have lived here for generations?” Ben-Gurion picked up the Bible on the witness stand and said “This is our Kushan, our title deed!”

But why should Palestine become a homeland for Jewish refugees simply because it had been Jewish land many centuries ago? After all, that same land had belonged to Canaanites and other peoples long before the Jews conquered it. If we are allowed to go far back in history to determine ownership of land, couldn’t it be claimed that Abraham’s descendants were invaders with no legitimate right to that land?

My first point is that the United Nations should have foreseen the catastrophic result of its decision to endorse the creation of a Jewish state in 1947. As for Jewish settlers who arrived after the victory of the Zionist army, they were told that the Arabs had simply run away to leave the place for them; they were so eager for safety in a state of their own after the horrors of the Holocaust that they could not think critically about the fate of the Arabs.

My second point is this. While Hamas committed atrocities on October 7 and deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms, Zionist paramilitary groups committed atrocities when they expelled Arabs from Palestine. These are well documented. The controversial Israeli historian Benny Morris estimates that the Israelis perpetrated 24 acts of massacre in 1948. In a 2004 interview with Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, he said: “In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field -- they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village -- she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima, in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.”

The most notorious example is the Arab village of Deir Yassin. In his book Palestine and the Great Powers, Michael J. Cohen describes the atrocity:

“The village had made a nonaggression pact with the Haganah and had abided by it strictly. (…) But on April 9, an IZL-Lehi [Irgun-Stern Gang] force attacked the village and reduced all resistance, ruthlessly and indiscriminately. The result was the massacre of some 245 villagers, men, women and children, many of whom were first paraded through the streets of Jerusalem, then taken back to the village and shot.”

The British officer who investigated the Deir Yassin massacre, Assistant Inspector General Richard Catling, stated:

“There is . . . no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. Many infants were also butchered and killed . . . Women had bracelets torn from their arms and rings from their fingers, and parts of some of the women’s ears were severed in order to remove earrings.”

In 1948 the Arabs and Jews were fighting a bitter, savage war. One side would commit an atrocity, which was followed by reprisals, which were followed by counter-reprisals. Jewish soldiers were not always honourable and innocent. Harsh treatment of Arab civilians was part of the Zionist strategy to take over Palestine.