Resorting to violence to make a political point is to be roundly condemned.

Israeli Embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, gunned down by Elias Rodriguez in Washington May 22 were innocents, as were the 15 Jews at their weekly Boulder, Colorado, demonstration for Hamas hostages. Eight were seriously burned June 1 when Mohamed Sabry Soliman attacked them with Molotov cocktails.

Rodriguez, 31, and a graduate of the University of Illinois, shouted “free Palestine” and told police “I did it for Palestine.” Further focusing his motivation was the red keffiyeh, an Arab Palestinian head dress, he was carrying.

Soliman, 45, and an Egyptian family man who has overstayed his visa, planned for a year some targeting for the Palestinian cause. He filled a backpack garden sprayer with gasoline he intended to weaponize as a spray ignited by thrown Molotov cocktails. When his resolve weakened, he only threw the explosives.

As the victims were Jewish, both attacks have been universally, conveniently, and narrowly condemned as motivated by antisemitism. From abroad Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu politicized the attacks as extension of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, a “left-wing militancy.” Media and organization spokespersons have it wrong and they know it. Netanyahu is shading events in support of his terrible and self-serving responses to Oct. 7. He knew that assault was coming and did not prevent it. He needed renewed war with Hamas to avoid trial for corruption.

The Israeli state was established with Zionist violence. Five hundred and thirty-one Palistinian villages were destroyed, 15,000 civilians were killed in the establishment of Israel. In the village of Deir Hassin alone, 107 women, men and children were murdered. Since 1948, Arab Palestinians have been refugees and prisoners in what was their own country. None of the response is antisemitism. That claim is a mask for Zionist misdeeds.

What has happened is suicide attacks Palestinians resorted to for decades in Israel, have now been carried out — with good reason — here in the U.S. Rodriguez and Soliman must be profiled as suicide bombers. President Joe Biden supplied Netanyahu with the deadliest of weapons and failed to stop the rampant, daily, and often deliberate killing of thousands of Palestinians. The U.S. has for decades funded what the UN regards as Israel’s illegal occupation and genocidal actions.

As an investigative journalist in the Middle East, I have become closely acquainted with families whose children either died carrying out suicide attacks on Israel, or were imprisoned for years on suspicion of anti-Israel intent. To understand what the UN and the world is dealing with here, we must step further back.

Romans drove Jews out of the Middle East. For centuries elsewhere, they persisted in their faith, would not assimilate, and were instead persecuted for not being Christians in Christian controlled Europe. By 1892, Jews came to be measured not as ethnically different Semites, but a race, beginning the assaults of antisemitism.

In response, the Hungarian journalist Theodore Herzl generated the Zionist movement, seeking a home for Jews in Palestine. It was the Russian Revisionist Zionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky who altered Zionism, advocating for an Israel as defined in the Bible. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’.”

Zionists proved merciless, even against other Jews. In 1933, they made a $35 million “Transfer Agreement” with the Nazis that saved 60,000 wealthy Jews, and built infrastructure for a future Israeli state in Palestine. The agreement funded Hitler’s fragile new government and blocked global boycott of German products. It can be forcefully argued that Zionist zeal allowed the Holocaust to happen.

The Israeli state was established with Zionist violence. 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed,15,000 were killed, and in the village of Deir Hassin alone 107 women, men and children were murdered. Prime minister in 1964, Menachem Begin had commanded the murderers at Deir Hassin. In 1973, he founded the extreme right wing Zionist Likud party, promoted illegal Israeli West Bank settlement now numbering half a million, and the annexation of territory. Likud controls Israel.

The toll of Palestinian dead and missing under rubble in Gaza is 68,796. It increases daily. Try to take that in.

Jews in Israel have long been victims of Zionism. They regularly demonstrate against it. Since 1948, Arab Palestinians have been refugees and prisoners in what was their own country. Protest, demonstration, and suicide attacks are not antisemitism. That claim is a mask for Zionist misdeeds.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an investigative journalist and historian, currently editing his newest work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”