Why we should all be talking about Israel and Gaza

Several people have advised me not to publicly weigh in on the Israel/Gaza situation. “It’s too controversial,” people have said. “Leave it to the Palestinians, Israelis, and experts,” they say. 

But I don’t think any of us should sit this out. When opposing sides in a conflict are so entrenched and so blinded by hatred and rage that they begin to dehumanize the other, that’s precisely when the rest of us need to step in and join the conversation. 

Everyone in the world should care about the Palestinian father searching through the rubble for the body of his young son. We should all care about the Israeli mother waiting for any word on her teenage daughter who was taken captive by Hamas. We should all be paying close attention and raising our voices because we all care about stopping cycles of suffering in the world—and we should raise our voices because that’s the only way we might ultimately compel our governments to press for a ceasefire.

Simply put, I don’t think anyone should ever be afraid to weigh in when kids are dying. We can’t sit in silent complicity just because we are afraid we might offend someone—not when the stakes are this high.

Before I carry on, I will say that what I’m writing here is by no means meant as a full historiography of the conflict in the region–I’m just touching on a few of the most salient moments that got the Palestinians and Israelis to where they are now.

This conflict is incredibly complex, tracing its roots so far back that when it all started, the factions were speaking languages that are now extinct. As we all know, Jews have been persecuted for millennia; Jewish exile after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem took place in 70 CE and Jewish persecution has persisted ever since, reaching its horrific apex in the Holocaust of World War II. 

Partially in response to the atrocities of that genocide, shortly after WWII the United Nations officially proposed that Palestine be divided into a Jewish State and an Arab State, and Israel declared its independence and statehood in 1948. The minority population of Jews living in Israel declared their independence shortly thereafter and civil war broke out when the non-Jewish Palestinians resisted. For the first time in 2,000 years, on land that they had sanctified as their homeland for centuries, Jews finally had a nation of their own. In the next three years, the population of Israel doubled as 700,000 Jews from around the world poured into Israel. 

The problem was that Muslim Palestinians had been the majority population living on the territory that world powers designated as Israel, and most of them had lived there for many generations—so they, too, rightfully called this stretch of arid soil their homeland. 700,000 Arab Palestinians were exiled from their homes in the late 1940s. Today, there are over five million Palestinian refugees living in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, and elsewhere. They never achieved statehood, and they have been living under oppressive conditions ever since they were  displaced 70 years ago.

On the other hand, the entire nation of Israel has been under constant threat since its founding. Suicide bombings, border skirmishes, and all-out wars have plagued Israel for the past seventy-five years with several hostile neighboring nations who would gladly see Israel removed from the map. Consequently, Israeli Jews have not only been living with the intergenerational trauma of thousands of years of Jewish persecution (there are still survivors of Nazi concentration camps living in Israel today) but they are also still living under daily threat to their lives and nation.

Likewise, there are many Palestinians living today who still remember being removed from their homes and relocated to Gaza or the West Bank in the late 1940s. To make matters worse, Palestinians in Gaza have lived under blockade by Israel for the past 17 years. The entire population has been prevented from leaving this one little strip of land, which has isolated Gazans from the rest of the world and forced the population into abject poverty.

Displacement from their homes into stateless purgatory caused outrage among many Palestinians, which allowed extremist militant groups to gain traction. Hamas is one such group. But Hamas does not represent all Palestinian or Arab sentiment (just as Netanyahu’s government in Israel does not represent the sentiment of all Israelis or all Jews). Hamas was elected to govern Gaza in the early 2000s, but no elections have been held in Gaza or the West Bank for the past 15 years. There is no “official” government and no one can claim to democratically represent the Palestinian people living in Gaza at this juncture. 

So when Hamas perpetrates a massive terrorist attack killing more than a thousand Israeli civilians, capturing hundreds and gloating about it all in a sickening manner online, they point to the past and current injustices against Palestinians and declare their actions justified.

And when the Israeli military strikes back with overwhelming force at Hamas, killing thousands of Palestinian children as collateral damage in the process, they point to recent attacks and declare their actions justified.

But vengeance, handed back and forth, only adds fuel to an already burning house. Hamas’ terror attacks only brought more suffering to the Palestinian people by instigating a retaliatory invasion—and Israel’s all-out war against Hamas in Gaza has already killed more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians, thousands of them children, which in turn is breeding even more anti-Israeli extremism amongst Palestinians.

Of course Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism, but when Israel does so by committing atrocities and war crimes of its own, then it defends itself without moral authority and only further entrenches both sides in an interminable conflict where there are no “good guys” and there will be no “winner.”  

I think we need to recognize that it is possible to support both the Palestinian right to sovereignty and Israel’s right to security. I think we need to recognize we can criticize both the government of Israel and Hamas without being anti-semitic or Islamophobic. We need to focus on the human rights of everyone involved and speak out against policies or actions by either side that violate human rights. And for those of us not embroiled directly in the conflict, we need to engage in conversations and debates while remaining vigilant and calling out any kind of bigotry that emerges from the emotional discord. 

Eleanor Roosevelt asked, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?” Why can’t that time be now? I think we should all be putting unrelenting pressure on our leaders to compel a ceasefire and demand a diplomatic solution that supports the well-being of all, protects children, and advances peace. Perhaps the solution ultimately leads to the coexistence of a Palestinian State and an Israeli State, or perhaps a future is built that allows Jews, Muslims, and Christians to peacefully and equally cohabitate in the nation of Israel. But if each side continues on this path of violence, death, senseless cruelty, and trauma will continue for generations more. 

That’s what I think. What do you think?