This past week the largest Pro-Israel lobbyist committee, AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), met in Washington, DC and their meeting made headline news because the presidential candidates (minus Senator Sanders) arrived and gave speeches to show their support for Israel.

Now while this big event was head, many average people in the world were not very educated on the issue and what the conflict between Israel and Palestine is about. Well, to explain their entire relationship it would be covering over 100 years of issues. But the current issue lies mainly in one place that you probably have heard of, the Gaza Strip. Israel has shown military force over Gaza in the past but a war started 2014 after a missile launch by Hamas (the governing authority over the Gaza strip) targeted Israeli cities and territories. Many Americans naturally took Israel’s side due to their good relationship (as seen in big lobbyist committees like AIPAC). They also say that since Palestine started the fight, Israel hold its right to defend itself. Now while this is a sound argument, Israeli has taken things very far. Israel has been unfairly arresting and jailing innocent women, children, and men in unsafe jails with no trial. In addition to this there are numerous cases of Israeli forces killing the innocent Palestinian people. It has turned from a conflict into Israel dominating and treating the Muslim people of Gaza terribly. This sparked outrage and split the conflict, and prompted the pro-Palestine protest #FreePalestine which grew on social media and then soon became a real movement, and on their website advocates for causes such as Israel freeing Gaza (obviously) and protesting U.S. Tax Dollars going to Israeli support.

As stated earlier, most of the presidential candidates went to the AIPAC meeting, but what were their stances? Well, the pro-Israel rhetoric was overbearing obviously, but it seemed to be more about begging for voters than anything. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton gave a complete biased anti-Palestine rant, accusing them of terrorism against Israel and even further expressed a dislike with Palestinian leaders and accusing them of rewarding the “families of terrorists.” She also made sure to go out of her way to speak and throw blows at Donald Trump. Speaking of which, Republican nominee Donald Trump pulled a usual Trump, pandering to the hate of Muslims and the Middle East and ending in a standing ovation. The speech was a lot of jumbled hateful nonsense about Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and (of course) Palestine, we are also met with a ton of the expected Trump ego we are all used to. Ted Cruz gave a similar pander but also threw shots at Trump while doing so. Talking of the sanctity of Israel and comparing Israel as a victim to the Jewish story of Purim where the Jewish people were under unfair rule of the Persians. Lastly, John Kasich gave in my opinion the worst speech of the four: it was scripted, it held no real substance and had no real memorable moments. Overall, the speeches were full of pro-Israel pandering. They are all throwing out words like “terrorist” to get the AIPAC crowd on their side. It seemed as though they only showed up to get some new voters. They say that Hamas are terrible and that Israel is the victim, without acknowledging the terrible acts Israel has committed. These speeches are like this also to reflect the good relationship between the two nations, which should be no hall pass for killing innocent Muslim people.