The recent opinionista by Ariel Seidman, chargé d’affaires of the Israeli embassy, is state propaganda deployed to defend a government currently accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – a litany of lies that contradict international law, documented evidence and the testimonies of those who witnessed the events Seidman distorts.
What follows is a response with the facts, legal analysis and evidence that readers deserve.
Seidman claims that “Israel has consistently sought peace” and that Palestinians “consistently rejected compromise” at Camp David in 2000. This isn’t a disputed interpretation – it’s a lie thoroughly exposed by members of the US negotiating team themselves. There was no formal Israeli offer at Camp David. Proposals were verbal, lacked detail and were never submitted in writing. What Israel proposed was not a state but a formalisation of apartheid: annexing 9% of the West Bank, excluding large portions of East Jerusalem, maintaining Israeli control over the Jordan Valley for 99 years. The resulting Palestinian “state” would have consisted of four disconnected Bantustans with no control over borders, airspace or resources.
Robert Malley, the special assistant to President Bill Clinton at the time, noted that the US team was “hard-pressed to answer” what Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s true positions were. Aaron David Miller, a veteran State Department official, admitted that American officials acted as “Israel’s lawyer” rather than impartial mediators. These are not Palestinian sources – these are the Americans who were in the room. Meanwhile, during this so-called peace process, Barak accelerated illegal settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land, particularly in East Jerusalem, far beyond his predecessors. The myth of the rejected generous offer wasn’t a misunderstanding – it was a con designed to blame Palestinians while Israel continued its colonial project.
Read more: Israel-Palestine War
The lie of Palestinian rejectionism collapses entirely when confronted with recent history. Over the past two years, Palestinians have repeatedly attempted to reach agreements while Israel has sabotaged every effort. According to Haim Rubinstein, the former spokesperson for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum – an Israeli – Hamas offered, on 9 or 10 October 2023, to release all civilian hostages in exchange for the Israel Defense Forces not entering Gaza. The Israeli government refused. Israel chose invasion over the return of its own civilians.
Since then, Hamas has accepted multiple proposals, allegedly from Israel via the US, only to watch Israel reject its own terms. On 3 October 2025, Hamas responded positively to President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, agreeing to release all Israeli captives in return for a permanent ceasefire. The pattern is unmistakable: when offered a genuine path to end the killing, Palestinians accept. Israel does not. The question is not whether Palestinians want peace, it is whether Israel will stop the genocide.
Seidman writes that “Israel is actively facilitating humanitarian aid to its enemy during active conflict – a level of restraint unprecedented in modern warfare”. This is not merely false, it is obscene. It is a lie told while children starve to death. Let’s be clear about what “unprecedented restraint” actually looks like in Gaza.
Amnesty International documented in February 2024 that Israel was defying the ICJ’s order to allow adequate humanitarian aid into Gaza. In the three weeks after the ICJ ruling, Israel cut aid trucks entering Gaza by a third. Before October 2023 an average of 500 trucks entered daily. After the ruling that number fell to 105. Then, on 2 March 2025, Israel stopped all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza entirely – the longest blockade since the war began.
Israel weaponised starvation. It then replaced UN aid with its own Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, distributing “aid” through soldiers and mercenaries. Aid agencies documented that this was a tactic to concentrate civilians in kill zones. Seidman calls this “restraint” while representing a government that has killed more than 200 aid workers, bombed hospitals and banned United Nations (UN) agencies. This isn’t analysis. It’s an insult to the intelligence of readers and an erasure of Palestinian suffering.
Seidman repeats the claim that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields” without providing evidence. This lie has been deployed for years to justify the mass killing of Palestinian civilians. It does not withstand scrutiny – and Israeli human rights organisations have said so. Under international law, proving the use of human shields requires demonstrating intentional co-location of military assets and civilians with the specific intent to deter attack. The burden of proof lies with the attacker – Israel.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have investigated these allegations repeatedly and found no evidence of Hamas systematically using human shields. Even if such violations occurred, they would not absolve Israel of its legal obligations to distinguish between civilian and military targets and ensure proportionality. But here’s the hypocrisy: Israel has systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields in both Gaza and the West Bank for decades – a practice documented by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation.
The UN Commission found that Israel has “consistently violated the basic principles of distinction and proportionality” and invented its own categories of “involved” and “uninvolved” persons to justify bombing hospitals, schools, universities and cultural sites. The human shields accusation is not an explanation. It is a smokescreen for war crimes.
Seidman suggests that because Israel dismantled some settlements in Gaza and Sinai, settlements are “not inherently obstacles to peace”. This obscures a simple fact: Israel has always known its settlements are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declares Israel’s settlement activity has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that Israeli settlements were established in breach of international law, reaffirming this in July 2024. But Israel didn’t need the ICJ. A formerly classified 1967 document reveals that Israel’s own foreign ministry legal counsel, Theodor Meron, advised that “civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. Israel knew. It proceeded anyway.
Today, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live illegally on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This is not organic growth. It is state-sponsored colonisation designed to render a viable Palestinian state impossible. Dismantling a few thousand settlements in Gaza while entrenching hundreds of thousands more in the West Bank is not evidence of seeking peace. It is evidence of strategic calculation: withdraw from the areas you can’t control, entrench in the areas you can.
Seidman claims Palestinian refugee status is uniquely “handled differently” and extends across generations, unlike other refugees. This is false. Under international law, refugees’ children and descendants are considered refugees until a durable solution is found – standard practice for all refugee populations worldwide. The tragedy is that for more than 75 years Israel has refused to implement Palestinians’ right of return under UN Resolution 194.
Amnesty International calls this a “flagrant violation of international law." The comparison to Jewish refugees from Arab countries is a false equivalence. While their suffering was real, they were absorbed and granted citizenship by Israel. Palestinians remain stateless, barred from their homeland by force.
Every claim Seidman makes is contradicted by evidence. The UN Commission has determined that Israel is committing genocide. International law condemns the settlements. The participants in the negotiations he cites have exposed his version of events as fiction. Israeli and international human rights organisations have debunked the human shields myth. Aid agencies have documented the starvation.
These are not “misconceptions” to be challenged by embassy officials defending a state accused of genocide before the ICJ. These are facts documented by the UN, international courts, and the world’s leading human rights organisations – including Israeli organisations. South Africa knows what this looks like. The creation of Bantustans, the dehumanising rhetoric, the criminalisation of resistance – these patterns are familiar. The question is not whether Israel is committing genocide. The UN has answered that. The question is what the world will do about it – and whether media outlets will continue to platform propaganda that seeks to justify it.
The facts speak for themselves. Palestinian lives matter. And no amount of embassy spin can erase that truth. DM