Doral, Florida — Israel has been much in the news lately, amid its war with Iran and rising antisemitism in the West. This columnist has already made clear his support for Israel. Now Roy Altman, a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, has stepped away from his busy judicial docket to produce this timely volume.
Judge Altman’s book examines the history, evidence, and law surrounding the State of Israel. It appeals to readers who value empirical facts and rational argument. Unfortunately, many others judge these matters through slogans, propaganda, and false moral equivalence. People are policy, and perspective often depends on where one stands. Yet Altman cuts through the noise with provable facts, clear legal reasoning, and moral clarity. For those open to persuasion, this is a compelling work.
The author was moved to write by the horrors of Saturday, October 7, 2023, when Hamas jihadists surged out of Gaza and unleashed a satanic pogrom against Israeli civilians in nearby agricultural communities and at a music festival. It was the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust ended in 1945.
Hamas, the jihadist group ruling Gaza, acts as a proxy for Iran’s mullahs—funded in part during the Obama years—and coordinates with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and other Islamist organizations such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In much of the West, the response to this pogrom was a grotesque moral inversion: Jews were cast as the aggressors finally receiving their due. Some sympathizers even celebrated the massacre as “decolonization.” This inversion rested on six recurring accusations against Israel:
Jews are colonial settlers in Israel.
The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was illegitimate under international law.
Israel has blocked the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel is occupying Gaza.
Israel is an apartheid state and a white-supremacist regime.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Altman systematically dismantles each claim, showing how civilized societies should resolve complex disputes through evidence and reason. Sadly, we do not live in a fully civilized world. “Moral inversion” continues to distort perceptions of Israel across much of the West.
Major Western media outlets such as The New York Times and the Associated Press did not merely fall for the jihadist narrative—they largely shared it. As it turned out, many of the most incendiary claims about Gaza proved to be fabrications.
I. Settler Colonialism and Indigeneity
Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. They have maintained a continuous presence there for more than 3,200 years, with Jerusalem as their capital. This is confirmed by archaeological evidence, genetic studies, and historical records from Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman and other non-Jewish sources. While the ancient Israelites were conquerors when Joshua led them across the Jordan to take Jericho in the second millennium B.C., they have been the indigenous people of the land ever since.
Jews worldwide share the same genetics, language, religion, culture, and history as those in Israel. Their unbroken connection to the land long predates the arrivals of Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Europeans, and all others.
In the early second century A.D., Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the land “Palaestina” and Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina” in a deliberate effort to erase the Jewish connection to their homeland following two major revolts. It was not until A.D. 636 that Arab Muslim invaders conquered the region and imposed jihadist rule.
II. International Law of Nation States
In 1949, the United Nations admitted Israel as a member state after it satisfied the four established criteria under international law: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to conduct foreign relations.
In 1947, the UN had voted to partition British Mandatory Palestine into an Arab Muslim state and a Jewish state. Arab leaders rejected the two-state solution and, upon Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, five Arab armies invaded with the declared aim of “a war of extermination and momentous massacre.” Against all odds, the invaders were defeated and an armistice line established.
By contrast, a putative State of Palestine would satisfy none of these legal requirements—despite recognition by some European countries.
III. Palestinian State Blocked
The Arab Muslim leadership has rejected at least six major opportunities to establish a Palestinian state, preferring instead a single Arab Muslim state “from the river to the sea” under Sharia law. These rejections include:
The 1936–39 Great Arab Revolt, marked by violent pogroms against Jews in Judea and Samaria.
The 1947 UN partition plan.
The 1967 Khartoum Resolution (“Three No’s”: no peace, no negotiations, no recognition of Israel).
The response to the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The 2000 Camp David summit under President Clinton.
The 2008 offer to the Palestinian Authority.
Instead, the response has been repeated “intifadas”—uprisings aimed at Israel’s destruction. Even today, the Mayor of New York City refuses to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada.”
IV. Occupation of Gaza
Israel captured Gaza in the 1967 war but withdrew unilaterally and completely in 2005. Far from turning Gaza into an “open-air prison,” Israel offered land for peace. Hamas seized control in 2006, transformed the territory into a launchpad for terror, and became the true jailers of its people.
Arab states such as Egypt (which borders Gaza) and Qatar actively oppose the evacuation or resettlement of Gazans, preferring to keep them as perpetual grievances in service of the jihadist cause. The people of Gaza should be free to emigrate and build better lives elsewhere, yet they are held as geopolitical pawns.
In this reviewer’s view, Israel must do in Gaza what Tacitus recorded Rome did in Carthage: create a desolation and call it peace. History records no Carthaginian terrorists.
V. Apartheid and White Supremacy
Modern Israel is a diverse democracy containing Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and other minorities. Its Jewish population includes Ashkenazim from Europe, Sephardim from Spain, Portugal, and North Africa, Mizrahim from the Middle East, and Black Jews from Sudan and Ethiopia.
After 1948, Jews were expelled from nearly every Muslim country in North Africa and the Middle East. In Israel, all citizens enjoy equal rights under the law; some Arab and other minorities even receive affirmative-action preferences. This stands in stark contrast to apartheid South Africa or the segregationist American South.
Arab Israelis largely support the state because they value living in a free, pluralistic society—unlike the authoritarian regimes surrounding them. Residents of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are not Israeli citizens and do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
VI. Genocide in Gaza
After Hamas took some 250 hostages on October 7, 2023, Israel launched a military campaign to rescue them and dismantle Hamas’s war machine. Israel did not target Gaza’s civilian population, even though broad support for Hamas exists there. There are no innocent civilians in Gaza in the conventional sense: children are indoctrinated into jihad from an early age with parental approval.
Israel has achieved a civilian-to-combatant death ratio of roughly 1:1.5 in urban warfare—one of the lowest in modern history, better than the U.S. ratio of 1:4.5 in Fallujah and Mosul. It accomplished this by assuming greater risk to its own troops, issuing advance warnings, and restraining the use of overwhelming firepower.
True genocides—the Holocaust, Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda—feature centralized extermination policies, dedicated killing infrastructure, no legal restraints, and indiscriminate slaughter. None of these apply to Israel. Israeli forces distinguish between combatants and civilians, operate under military justice, wear uniforms, and even facilitate humanitarian aid (much of which Hamas diverts). It is Hamas that pursues genocidal aims against Jews.
Conclusion
Judge Altman’s book is overwhelmingly persuasive on the facts and the law. Yet it is essential without being sufficient to end antisemitism. One cannot reason people out of positions they did not reason themselves into. Antisemitism endures because it is impervious to evidence and logic.
The Jews’ survival as a distinct people—ethnic, linguistic and cultural—for millennia is unprecedented. Their endurance stands as empirical testimony to the God of the Bible and His faithfulness to His promises.
Frederick the Great, the Enlightenment skeptic, demanded proof of God’s existence. His court chaplain’s ultimate reply was simple: “Your Majesty, the Jews!”
Jews are the people of God. Those at peace with God are at peace with the Jews; those who reject God often turn against them. Secularists and Islamists alike seek to erase the Jews to deny the God of the Bible. As Leo Tolstoy observed in the book’s foreword: “A Jew is a symbol of eternity… such a nation cannot vanish.” Pope John Paul II agreed. To those who deny eternity, however, the Jew remains an inconvenient witness.
The reviewer calls for Israel to do "what Rome did in Carthage: create a desolation and call it peace." Rome massacred 150,000 people and enslaved the survivors. This is a call for genocide dressed in classical allusion. It has no place in a legal or moral argument about any conflict involving civilian populations. It is deeply troubling that a lawyer, whether in private practice or on the bench, would advance such an argument.
The profound irony: Rome's destruction of Jerusalem, expulsion of Jews from Judea, and renaming of the land as Palaestina is the foundational historical trauma underlying the very argument this book makes. Celebrating Roman methods while building a case on Roman persecution is a massively discordant.
Excellent summary of Israel on Trial. I hope that people will finally recognize the propaganda Israel had endured. The radical Islamists have no boundaries for their hate.