Today we turn to a YouTube video that has resurfaced with renewed relevance: “Israel Does Not Target the Palestinian Civilians.”
The video, originally uploaded more than a decade ago, challenges one of Israel’s most frequently repeated claims that its military avoids harming civilians.
Through archival footage and documented incidents, it highlights a long‑standing pattern of civilian casualties in Gaza and the West Bank.
It also exposes the gap between official Israeli messaging and the findings of journalists and human rights organizations.
Investigations cited in related reporting show that the majority of Palestinians killed in major Israeli offensives have been civilians.
This includes Christians, who make up a small but historic community in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Jerusalem, and Gaza.
The video’s context is especially important today, as Palestinian Christian leaders continue to report harassment, land seizures, and restrictions on worship imposed by Israeli authorities.
Church properties have faced repeated attacks by extremist settlers, and clergy have documented rising intimidation in occupied East Jerusalem.
In Bethlehem, the separation wall cuts Christian neighborhoods off from Jerusalem, limiting access to holy sites and economic life.
These realities contradict the narrative that Christians in Palestine enjoy freedom under Israeli control.
The video underscores how official statements often obscure the lived experiences of both Muslim and Christian Palestinians.
It shows how language phrases like “precision strikes” or “human shields” is used to deflect accountability for civilian harm.
At the same time, it documents the destruction of homes, schools, and churches that has shaped Palestinian life for generations.
The contrast between rhetoric and reality is stark.
The video argues that the claim “Israel does not target civilians” functions more as a political talking point than an accurate description of military conduct.
It invites viewers to examine the evidence themselves rather than rely on official narratives.
It also highlights the importance of independent documentation in conflict zones.
For many, this video serves as an early record of a pattern that continues today.
It is not just a historical clip, it is a reminder of how narratives are constructed, repeated, and used to justify ongoing harm.
And it challenges us to ask: when the evidence contradicts the rhetoric, whose truth do we accept?

This is This Week in Palestine.

When the Story Becomes the Weapon

Today, we open with the reality the world keeps trying to rename. On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed at least thirty‑two Palestinians—lives added to the more than five hundred already lost during what officials insisted on calling a “ceasefire.” A ceasefire in name only. One that never reached the families sheltering in shattered buildings, never reached the children sleeping under tarps, never reached the wounded waiting for medical care that no longer exists.

And then, on Monday, the Rafah crossing to Egypt was partially opened, framed as a gesture of humanitarian relief. But Israel announced it would allow only one hundred and fifty Palestinians to leave each day. As one emergency medic put it, “At this rate, it would take over a year for the twenty thousand awaiting evacuation to leave.” A year for people who do not have a year. A year for people who may not have a week.

This is the landscape as Israel’s assault—what many scholars, jurists, and human rights organizations have described as genocide—enters its twenty‑eighth month. Twenty‑eight months of siege, bombardment, starvation, displacement, and the systematic destruction of a society. Twenty‑eight months of a world watching, calculating, debating, and too often doing nothing.

But this violence is not sustained by military force alone. It is upheld by political alliances, diplomatic cover, and—perhaps most powerfully—by the stories told about it. Stories that shape public opinion. Stories that justify policy. Stories that turn victims into threats and atrocities into “self‑defense.”

And nowhere has that complicity been clearer than in the Western media ecosystem. One of the most glaring examples is the now‑debunked New York Times story “Screams Without Words.” Published with dramatic flair and presented as investigative journalism, it claimed to uncover evidence of systematic sexual violence committed by Palestinians on October 7th. The story was immediately amplified by U.S. officials and used to justify the continued flow of weapons, funding, and diplomatic protection for Israel’s actions. It became a talking point, a rallying cry, a moral shield for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

But the story wasn’t true. Not partially true. Not misinterpreted. It collapsed under scrutiny—built on unverifiable testimonies, politically motivated sources, and evidence that contradicted the narrative. Internal fact‑checkers were sidelined. Doubts were ignored. And once the story was out, it spread unchecked: repeated on cable news, cited by politicians, weaponized by commentators, and absorbed by the public as fact.

This is how propaganda works today—not through state‑run newspapers, but through respected institutions that carry the veneer of credibility. And when those institutions fail, the consequences are not abstract. They are measured in lives. While false claims circulated, Gaza was being bombed. Families were being buried under rubble. Hospitals were being destroyed. Children were starving. Entire neighborhoods were being erased.

This is not just a media critique. This is about the cost of a lie.

Today, we examine how narratives are constructed, how they travel, and how they are used to justify the unjustifiable. We look at the machinery behind the headlines, the politics behind the storytelling, and the human beings erased in the process.

Stay with us,
as we pull apart the narratives that shield power,
as we center the voices long pushed aside,
and as we insist on truth in a moment built on distortion.

This is This Week in Palestine.

Today, we open with a conversation that cuts straight through the noise. Across social media and mainstream platforms, polished narratives about Israel’s history circulate with confidence, often delivered by high‑profile commentators who speak with certainty but not always with accuracy. One of the loudest among them is Ben Shapiro, whose claims about the origins of the conflict, the Nakba, and Palestinian history have reached millions.

But reach does not equal truth.

And that brings us to Stephen Kapos.
Kapos is a Holocaust survivor, a man who lived through the machinery of fascism and carries the memory of what unchecked violence and dehumanization can do. His voice is grounded in lived experience, in moral clarity, and in a lifelong commitment to speaking out when injustice repeats its patterns. When he talks about Gaza, he speaks not from ideology, but from the memory of what happens when the world looks away.

Shapiro, on the other hand, speaks from behind a microphone, shaping narratives that often blur history with selective interpretation. Kapos speaks from the weight of survival, insisting that truth must be protected from distortion. One deals in confident commentary. The other deals in memory, evidence, and the moral responsibility that comes with witnessing humanity at its worst.

In the video “Debunking Every Lie Shapiro Told on Israel’s History,” researchers and historians take Shapiro’s claims apart one by one, grounding their responses in documented history, archival evidence, and lived experience. They challenge the myths, expose the distortions, and remind us that the story of this land cannot be reduced to slogans or soundbites.

Today, we bring that same spirit of clarity into our own space.
We examine how narratives are shaped, how misinformation spreads, and why historical truth matters now more than ever. Because understanding the past is not an academic exercise. It is essential to understanding the violence unfolding today, the displacement of millions, and the struggle for justice that continues despite every attempt to erase it.

So, stay with us,
as we pull apart the talking points,
as we return to the historical record,
and as we center the voices who refuse to let truth be rewritten.

Welcome to This Week in Palestine.